Thomas Thieme

On operated by Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarck the German Empire is finally founded in 1871 on the floors of Versailles castle, ancestral seat of the French monarchy.

Nine-year-old Max moves to Geroldseck Castle, together with his mother, who takes up a position as a geriatric nurse there. Apparently a shrewd thief is up to mischief here. His mother is suspected, she is threatened with dismissal. Therefore, together with the three residents of the old people's home at table no. 7, Max does everything possible to convict the real perpetrator.

Anna teaches violin at a music school, her husband is an instrument-maker. They have a 10-year-old son, Jonas. At school, Anna champions young Alexander, in whom she alone sees great talent. She devotes much energy and attention preparing him for the next stage exam to prove she was right. Soon Anna devotes more time to him than to Jonas, bringing the two boys into rivalry. At the same time her marriage is collapsing, she withdraws increasingly from her own family and starts an affair with her colleague Christian, who is encouraging her to join a quartet. When she fails during their joint concert, the pressure mounts. With Alexander now her vehicle, she drives him ever onwards and upwards. Come the day of the exam, events take a tragic turn...

Martin Behrens is a Middle East expert for the German intelligence agency BND. He obtains information leading to a U.S. drone strike on a wanted terrorist in Zahiristan. A few days later, there's a terrorist attack on a restaurant – the video claiming responsibility calls it payback for the drone strike. Freelance journalist Aurice, with whom Martin was having an affair, is among the victims – she was investigating corruption at the heart of the BND. Martin soon has to realize that in a world where big corporations profit from arms deals as well as from homeland security contracts, good and evil are sometimes hard to tell apart.

The name of car manufacturer Carl F. W. Borgward is still synonymous with the West German Wirtschaftswunder. For hundreds of thousands the "Isabella" from Borgward is the first car after the war while Borgward secures thousands of jobs in Bremen. But in 1961, the company of the passionate constructor goes surprisingly broke.

The retired Chief superintendent Jakob Franck who often had to inform relatives as a "death messenger", now hopes to lead a life beyond the dead.

Max Bretschneider pretends to be a communist in order to conduct the last interview with Erich Honecker.

Four very retired, ex-GDR spies, or "Kundschafter des Friedens" as they were officially named, led by the once legendary Jochen Falk, are called on by the German government. Their mission is to rescue the interim president of the divided Republic of Katschekistan, who has been kidnapped by separatists, along with Berlin's official man on the ground, Franz Kern. To keep Jochen and his maybe no longer so crack team under control, all of whom are determined to prove they were treated unfairly by history, they are put under the command of the young and enthusiastic BND agent Paula Kern.

Filmmaker Fritz Lang seeks inspiration for his first sound film by immersing himself in the case of serial killer Peter Kürten.

It starts with "Peter Schlemihl's Miraculous Story", which tells of a man travelling the world in seven-league boots. Adelbert von Chamisso wrote the tale before setting off to Russia on scientific expedition in 1815. He analysed the flora of Alaska and then explored the Northwest Passage, just like Cook and voyager Bering had done previously, the latter with physician and naturalist Steller in tow. A porthole reveals the view. Thus begins Ottinger's journey from Alaska to Kamchatka via Chukotka, with her predecessors’ log books to accompany her on her way.

For Pastor Judith Ehrmann, her job as an emergency counselor is more than just part of her job: giving people assistance is a vocation for them. But when a classmate of her son dies in a car accident, that's unusual. Judith begins to doubt: herself, her job - but also her family. For all at once everything seems to indicate that her own husband and son were involved in the accident and now want to cover this up. The emotionally intense drama of award-winning director Aelrun Goette raises fundamental themes without giving easy answers.

When Adolf Hitler reawakens at the site of his former bunker in present-day Berlin, he is mistaken for a comedian and quickly becomes a media phenomenon.

Chaos in the Chancellery: Prime Minister Katharina Wendt loses her memory during a spontaneous trip with husband Helmuth and wakes up every morning since then with the knowledge of 1989. The therapy aims to activate her emotional center. No easy task with such a sober woman! Chancellery Minister Dieter Kahnitz must get her fit again until the end of the summer break, otherwise the euro will fail and then Europe will fail! But the minister would not mind being chancellor himself. Will the Chancellor succeed in remembering in time?

In Ethiopia, Frank Michalka has found a new home and left his criminal past behind. But happiness does not last long and the former offender must go back to Germany. Once there, he immediately falls back into old patterns and robbed a bank.

German TV adaptation of Wilhelm Hauff‘s fairy tale “Heart of Stone“.

A man who has lost his wife and daughter finds a baby in a garbage. He decides to save her.

Violent youth gangs and a police force way out of its depth. When a police operation goes awry and two policemen die, the powder keg threatens to ignite as the SWAT team knows only one goal: revenge - irrespective of the law.

Joseph Komalschek was sentenced to 30 years in prison for cruelly murdering a young mother and her newborn baby. He never confessed his crimes and the bodies could not be found. After being released from prison, he returns to his hometown. People there treat him with distrust and disdain.

Janne Flecker returns to her hometown of Cuxhaven because her brother Erik was found murdered in the mud. There, Janne's picture of her family is crumbling, known shipyard owners.

When an illicit arms deal goes bad, North Korean spy Pyo Jong-seong finds himself targeted not just by the South Koreans but also his own bosses.

The story of the final seven months in the life of German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.

What could be lovelier than Women's Lake - a magical summer setting near Berlin? Rosa, perhaps. She's the slightly melancholy guardian of the lake, spending her days in a boat, trapping fish and watching for poachers. Or her lover, the polished and prosperous Kirsten, with her perfect cottage on the shore of Frauensee. How does their relationship work, and what effect will the two young lesbians in the canoe have on it all? Thoughtful, complex and beautiful.

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.

The nine-year-old Nikolas has been missing for days. The criminal psychologist Claudia Meinert notices contradictions in her conversation with the parents of the missing child. In particular Nikolas' mother appears to be hiding something. When a video of the missing Nikolas surfaces, showing him tied up in a cellar, the trail leads to his school. The 13-year-old Leon and Mathilda strike the psychologist as conspicuous and provocative. Shortly afterwards, Meinert encounters the children with Nikolas' parents at the local swimming pool and her suspicions are confirmed: the parents are entangled in an insidious father-mother-child game with the possible suspects Leon and Mathilda. Now it is up to the psychologist to resolve the dark mystery of Nikolas' disappearance and save the child.

In the early 60s, Bernward Vesper and fellow university student Gudrun Ensslin begin a passionate love in the stifling atmosphere of provincial West Germany. Dedicated to the power of the written word, Bernward and Gudrun found a publishing house whose first publication is, paradoxically to many, a controversial past work of Bernward's ostracized father, an infamous Nazi author. Bernward defends his father's writing ability, even if he is haunted by his father's suspicious past.

An English teacher brings soccer to a German school in the 19th Century.

2010 documentary film on the Armenian Genocide by the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. It is based on eyewitness reports by European and American personnel stationed in the Near East at the time, Armenian survivors and other contemporary witnesses which are recited by modern German actors.

A successful artist loses control of his life after his young daughter's death. A chance for a new start appears, but all is not what it seems.

Berlin, 1989. Sascha is a young East German border guard and Franzi is a lively young West German woman who's just moved into a flat next to Sascha's watchtower at the Berlin Wall. It takes only a slight mishap and a selfless act of chivalry and the two fall in love. But soon the Stasi believes they are witnessing the start of a revolt. This is the time of mass protests and East Germans taking refuge in the West German embassy in Prague after all. Franzi and Sascha have to find their ways to stand up for their love and strive for the impossible; to bring down the wall.

A docudrama about Germany's former chancellor Helmut Kohl, whose 16-year tenure during the 80s and 90s included the reunification of the country after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Two policemen are stationed on Amrum, a North Sea island on the West coast of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany’ – an elder, and one who is several decades his junior. Life is easy, just that the junior can’t find a wife, because no young woman seems to be interested in the peaceful life on the island. All of a sudden, a wounded lady who turns out to be one of two bodyguard for a threatened witness who lives in hiding on Amrum, bursts into the police station and seeks help from the two officers. I missed some bits of the plot, but somehow, the second one of the bodyguards hiding the witness on the island has been killed already, and the second one, seeking help from the local police, was wounded in the incidence, and then she apparently succumbs, too.

Berlin 36 is a 2009 German film telling the fate of Jewish athlete Gretel Bergmann in the 1936 Summer Olympics. She was replaced by the Nazi regime by an athlete later discovered to be a man. The film is based on a true story and was released in Germany on September 10, 2009. Reporters at Der Spiegel challenged the historical basis for many of the events in the film, pointing to arrest records and medical examinations indicating German authorities did not learn Dora Ratjen was male until 1938.

Following her parents' wishes, spirited seventeen-year-old Effi Briest marries Baron von Innstetten – a former admirer of her mother – who is twenty years Effi's senior. This marriage of prudence heralds the beginning of a humdrum life, far from home, for Effi. Innstetten devotes himself entirely to his political career, and the sleepy small town of Kessin has very little to offer in terms of variety. But then, one day, Innstetten's old regimental comrade, Major Crampas – a charming womanizer – arrives on the scene.

Success is a question of confidence, particularly in times of crisis. Life would be unbearable if there weren’t beautiful things to brighten it up a little, including pretty faces. Frank Knöpfel constantly flirts with life with his beguiling bright blue eyes. He buys a complete stranger an expensive coat in a designer boutique just because he feels like it. He disguises himself as a businessman from Oslo, a Mafia boss, a stock exchange specialist and an estate agent, whatever it takes to bring in the cash. He is the type of person who enjoys looking in the mirror, and delights in what he sees there. A flirtation with a customer in a boutique leads to Frank’s undoing.

'Der Baader Meinhof Komplex' depicts the political turmoil in the period from 1967 to the bloody "Deutschen Herbst" in 1977. The movie approaches the events based on Stefan Aust's standard work on the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF). The story centers on the leadership of the self named anti-fascist resistance to state violence: Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin.

True story about how famous German businessman and archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann located the ruins of the mythical ancient city of Troy in Turkey in 1868.

In 1984 East Berlin, an agent of the secret police, conducting surveillance on a writer and his lover, finds himself becoming increasingly absorbed by their lives.

Jan Landers made it: Grown up in East Berlin, he quickly made his career after the turnaround: from the weatherman of a local station to the newsreader in Hamburg.

In April of 1945, Germany stands at the brink of defeat with the Russian Army closing in from the east and the Allied Expeditionary Force attacking from the west. In Berlin, capital of the Third Reich, Adolf Hitler proclaims that Germany will still achieve victory and orders his generals and advisers to fight to the last man. When the end finally does come, and Hitler lies dead by his own hand, what is left of his military must find a way to end the killing that is the Battle of Berlin, and lay down their arms in surrender.

Martin is the ambitious one in the family. He is poised to start on his doctorate, when he is diagnosed with testicular cancer and all his future plans begin to unravel. The removal of one testicle reduces the most immediate threat, but the cancer has already spread and Martin's doctor argues for an operation that would save him, but could also castrate him.

A great mosaic, a labyrinth of scenes, dialogue splinters, interviews, portraits of people surrounding Hamlet and wanting to be part of his story.

The couple Hanna and Georg are overjoyed when Hanna finally gets pregnant, but things take a turn for the worst when Georg's father demands that abortion be performed because of a hereditary defect in his family.

One of the most spectacular and renowned conductors of the 1930s, Wilhelm Furtwangler's reputation rivaled that of Toscanini's. After the war, he was investigated as part of the Allies' de-Nazification programme. In the bombed-out Berlin of the immediate post-war period, the Allies slowly bring law and order to bear on an occupied Germany. An American major is given the Furtwangler file, and is told to find everything he can and to prosecute the man ruthlessly. Tough and hard-nosed, Major Steve Arnold sets out to investigate a world of which he knows nothing.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was the author of Werther, the romantic novel that was transformed into a play during Goethe's lifetime and which initiated the whole German romantic movement. The book's story tells of young love and suicide. In this East German film, based on a book by Thomas Mann, Lotte (Lilli Palmer) was the woman who served as the model for the heroine in the novel Werther. She comes to Goethe's hometown for a visit, and her experiences there eerily re-create episodes from the book. Goethe comes across as a pompous old bore, and his friends as pandering sycophants, in this very proper communist party-sponsored, anti-heroic movie.