Gisela Zick

Thomas Brasch was born as a German-Jewish emigrant in England in order to move to the young GDR with his family at the beginning of the 1950s. His father Horst is primarily interested in helping to build the new German state. But Thomas prefers to realize himself as a writer and in doing so discovers his potential as a poetic rebel. His very first play was banned and soon afterwards he lost his place at the film school. When the tanks of the Soviet Union roll through the Czech capital Prague in 1968, Brasch and his girlfriend Sanda and other students try to call for protest in the streets of Berlin - and fail. His own father betrays him to the Stasi and allows Thomas to go to prison. After being paroled, he continues to try his hand at poet writing about love, revolt and death. In the GDR, however, you don't want to have anything to do with someone like him.

West Germany in the 1970s. Many artists, journalists and intellectuals were branded as sympathizers of Baader-Meinhof's left-wing terrorism. The parents of the director, too: Margarethe von Trotta and his stepfather, Volker Schlöndorff. With extensive archive materials and film clips as well as Margarethe von Trotta's private diaries the film portrays one German family and the society of the time.

Paul Bacher is in crisis. If he could feel in the past as one of the most influential writers of his generation, he has long lacked ideas and impetus for a new great work. His reading tours are becoming more and more a sad affair with too much alcohol and too little public. Then Paul overflows in a drunken hitchhiker, flees first scared and later removes the body, without talking to anyone about the experience. But something is flowing in its interior. Paul starts to write again. The criticism is done, but the story about the death of a hitchhiker also arouses suspicion.

Something terrible is about to happen in a small town in Germany. Nobody knows the reason why, except one person: Rico Bartsch. The 15-year old grammar school pupil, an absolute outsider, is in love with the most beautiful girl at his school. What in the beginning is a longing that can never be fulfilled will come true at the end of the story. Beautiful Regine will beg for Rico’s love. Until then several inhabitants of the town will die an unnatural death...

Sommer ’04 is a character study of a family on vacation. German director Stefan Krohmer examines the emotional abyss and problems behind the seemingly nice facade of an intact family as they experience guilt, love and jealousy.

A documentary about the life of the actress Hildegard Knef.

The history of a family, in the film business now for three generations, behind and in front of the camera. The film is not only a foray through the history of this remarkable family, but also through the history of German film and contemporary history as well.

This is the story of Sylvia, who looses her stepchildren on a shopping trip in Poland. For fear of loosing her husband's love, too, she is unable to tell him what has happened and returns home, pretending anything is fine. When realising the missing of his children, the father starts a desperate retrieval. He is ready to give up anything in order to find them. Sylvia supports him in any way; she tries to comfort him and takes care of his hope's vulnerable flame. For the first time he really needs her. While the children are trying their best to get home, the police fails in detecting their whereabouts. When a very vague trace leads to Poland, the parents hit the road to find their children on their own.

Set against the backdrop of post-unification Germany, the film explores the breakdown of relations in a decaying social structure.