Ute Paffendorf

The successful writer Paul and the sought-after voice actress Emilia were always considered to be the absolute dream couple by friends: Harmonious, happy, successful, with three charming children named Bo, Marie and Fe. But now, in their late 40s, their relationship is threatened by a crisis.

Friends Franzi, Marieave and Kim planned to spend the summer rehearsing for a Peter Pan play, but when strange things start to happen at the theatre they take on the role of investigators.

Helen Brindel is trapped in a violent marriage and the prison of her faith when she falls in love with a scholar, Professor Eduard Gluck. But he’s a secret porn addict. Slowly, carefully, two very different individuals get to know each other.

Sam and Anna are part of the hip, vegan, green, eco-friendly, upper-class subculture of Berlin. Anna is a successful doctor, and Nick works in advertising. However, life in Germany's capital is fast-paced and stressful, so the two of them decide to take the next step towards the ideal "eco lifestyle" and move out to the country. As they arrive, they find that life in the country is much less relaxing than they expected, as the rather eccentric locals keep them on their toes.

Alma’s family has been producing quality olive oil in the Baix Maestrat area of Spain’s Castellón for generations. Yet changing pressures in the industry have made their traditional practices economically untenable, and the family is now in the mass-production poultry business. Alma’s grandfather has not spoken in years. Sadness envelopes him, and he no longer wants to eat. His sons—Alma’s father and uncle—are impatient with him, but Alma understands her grandfather. She realizes he has been grieving for a thousand-year-old olive tree that the family has uprooted and sold to pay some debts. (A sadly common reality in Castellón at present.) Unable to bear the idea that her grandfather could die without seeing this terrible wrong corrected, Alma undertakes a quixotic mission to locate the tree and return it to the family orchard, so that her grandfather may have peace in his final days.

A luxury hotel in a conflict zone. Development aid worker Dorothea begins an affair with a young drifter, Alec, but what starts as sweet distraction brings her dangerously close to losing control.

Now that we’re all living longer and “40 is the new 30,” why can’t 60 be the new 40? That’s what Louise and Frans think when they embark on bold new life adventures. Louise is a molecular biologist who decides to make a withdrawal from the sperm bank and have a baby. Meanwhile, gallery owner Frans decides to re-boot his career by finding the hottest new talent on the art scene. While attempting to recapture their lost youth and avoid total ridicule, Louise and Frans accidentally cross paths.

The story of a farmer, Helmer, who realizes that his life has been influenced to an unhealthy extent by his aging father.

A lifeguard at Lake Müggel has his hand bitten off and the marks indicate a shark attack. The lake is closed to the public by extending a local festival indefinitely while the city council thinks of what can be done to remove the shark. The public becomes restless having their lake closed for so long and come up with a plan to drive the shark from the lake with large quantities of beer.

Two young guys in a bar hit on the woman they fancy by sending one of them over who tells her that the other one is terminally ill...

In 1938 Hans Zeisig, an apolitical comedian, impersonator and cabaret actor, flees with a Russian passport (instead of American, which he would have preferred) from Nazi-Berlin, and finds himself in the legendary Hotel Lux, the 'lost paradise' of the Comintern, in Moscow. Everyone believes that Zeisig is a man named Hansen, Hitler's personal astrologer. But Zeisig quickly realizes that he's gone from the frying pan into the fire. In the Hotel Lux he meets his friends Frida and later Meyer again, still passionate communists. For the three idealists an adventure between love and death begins to run his course.

Bavaria, Germany, 1950s. The sudden return of the young Kathrin to the small village where she was born stirs up the feelings of guilt and personal ghosts of its inhabitants, haunted by dark memories related to a multiple murder that happened two years earlier at the Tannöd farm, a hideous crime that remains unsolved.

Eternal daydreamer Mel can't wait to quit her sucky catering job and fly to her dream destination: Portugal. Things change when the beautiful Jenny literally crashes into her life when Mel nearly runs her over in her classic BMW. It is love at first sight, however there is just one problem: Jenny mistakenly assumes Mel to be a boy. Despite this, the pair become boyfriend and girlfriend. With Mel attempting to disguise her true gender at every turn, her journey from tomboy to out lesbian is fraught with life-defining dilemmas and sweet surprises.

The story opens with Bica, a solvent abusing waif, trying in vain to evade the Romanian police with her infant brother in tow. Separated from her sibling she is taken to Germany, concealed in the trunk of a car. There she is trained as a thief, picking the pockets of strangers to fill those of her patron. One of her victims is the separated father of Milka, a brat with razor sharp tongue. From this unlikely start a friendship forms and Bica gets a glimpse into a world of material security, if not emotional closeness...

Upon being informed that he is fatally ill with cancer, Max, who works at a used car store, steals money which his boss has gained through illegal means. When fleeing from the scene of the crime Max crashes his car. He is pulled unconscious from the destroyed vehicle by a homely young woman, Emma, who lives alone on a farm where Max decides to stay in order to hide from the police and his boss.