Friedrich Gnaß

Drama about an impoverished family, a widowed mother and her two sons, trying to get by.

13-year old Thomas Berndorf, the son of the rich business man Alexander Berndorf, becomes friends with Hannes Wille, whose father works as foreman. They get to know each because Hannes sometimes is allowed to polish Berndorf′s Mercedes 300. They make a bet whose mother is the most beautiful. Hannes assumes that Mrs. Berndorf is only admired for her expensive jewellery. Thus, he suggests that Thomas should steal a collier from his mother. Out of solidarity, he also robs a golden brooch from his mother. At home at the Berndorfs, a severe crisis threatens Thomas′s parents′ "marriage of convenience", and financial hardships are following on the theft.

Actually, the Düsseldorf musician and composer Peter Weselin only wanted to spend his placid vacation with his uncle in the Vogtland village of Klingenthal. But in the city famous for its manufacture of musical instruments, the annual music festival is about to start. For the festival, the accordion factory asks Peter for a large composition for the symphonic orchestra. Furthermore, cute Anna asks him to write a pop song for her youth dance band. Thus, Peter finds no rest during his vacation.

On a barren and stormy island, fishing families eke out a meager existence on what they can catch during summer, and what washes ashore during winter. But little has been washing ashore of late, and their situation worsens. Elders recall how twenty years ago, when the lighthouse keeper’s beacon went dark, a cargo ship broke apart on the cliffs. It proved a bountiful accident for the fishermen. Today people on the island view the conscientious lighthouse keepers with evil hungry eyes...

This film is the first of a two-part historical and biographical portrait of the communist politician and anti-fascist Ernst Thälmann. In early November 1918, Ernst Thälmann is an unwilling soldier serving on the western front. As the revolutionary movement at home is threatened by the betrayal of the Social Democrats and fissures in the working class, Thälmann calls on his fellow soldiers to put down their weapons and unite with the workers in the communist struggle at home. Thälmann’s qualms about which side he is fighting on continue, but when the local police attempt to prevent a shipment of provisions and supplies from reaching the people in Petrograd, he intervenes and the ship is unloaded. With this moment of clarity, Thälmann continues to follow his political convictions and joins the workers at the Hamburg uprising in October 1923.

An old man living in an oriental city tells the story of his life to a group of kids: He too was once a young boy by the name of Little Muck - much like them, but with better manners and a heap of problems. Having lost his father at early age, little Muck is expelled from home by his greedy relatives. He wanders off into the desert hoping to find the merchant who sells good fortune. Amidst the dunes of sand he comes across a small house owned by a wicked woman and her many cats. She wants to make Little Muck her servant, but he manages to escape by stealing a pair of magic shoes which enable him to run faster than any man in the country. From there he heads right into the next set of challenges...

Berlin 1952, seven years after WWII. Four women are looking for a good man and happiness in the divided city. Their destinies are loosely connected through one person: the West Berlin dandy and womanizer, Conny.

East German propaganda film about an american army base trying to take away land from a west german village.

A young married couple - both of them actors - work in the divided city of Berlin. Agnes, the young woman, is on location in East Berlin, and Jochen, her husband, works at the Westend Theater in West Berlin. This young marriage is in danger of breaking up as they vehemently defend their diametrically opposed views. The way they see politics, art and the world differs extremely.

Diederich Heßling is scared of everything and everyone. But as he grows up, he comes to realize that he has to offer his services to the powers-that-be if he wants to wield power himself. His life motto now runs: bow to those at the top and tread on those below. In this way, he always succeeds: as a student in a duel-fighting student fraternity and as a businessman in a paper factory. He cajoles the obese district administrative president Von Wulkow and wins his favor. He slanders his financial rivals and hatches a plot with the social democrats in the town council. On his honeymoon with his rich wife Guste, he finally finds a chance to do his beloved Kaiser a favor. And when a memorial to the Kaiser is unveiled in the town where Diederich lives and works, he delivers the address. He stands behind the lectern in the pouring rain, saluting his Kaiser. The crowd is dispersed. Everything is laid in ruins...

The brothers Theo and Gustav Benthin pull profits through smuggling in divided Germany: Theo in the West and Gustav in the East. The East German police catch on quickly, however, and Gustav is arrested. The small band of smugglers disperses, with Gustav’s chauffer Peter Naumann fleeing to the West and his sister choosing the East after struggling to find work and lodging in the West.

A story about a family after the Second World War. The petty bourgeois cashier Karl Weber of Berlin observes from a distance how his son Ernst participates in the building of a new socialist society. Karl does not understand Ernst's visions, instead he confides in his other son Harry. However, Harry becomes involved in illicit business and Karl quickly realizes that it would be best to join his son Ernst in the citizen-owned factory.

Mother Wolffen, a washerwoman, is a woman of principle: A poor man must do what he must to get through life, only he mustn't get caught doing it. All sorts of crooked deals contribute to the improvement of the daily menu and the increase of household funds. When everyone is searching for pensioner Krueger's missing beaverskin coat, Mother Wolffen and her family are calmly enjoying fresh roast venison.

A moving saga focusing on the women in a family that spans three generations and almost 70 years of German history, from the Wilhelmine period through the end of WWII. This film shows that it takes a combination of hard work, political consciousness and family work in tandem to face the tragedies of war, economic hardship and death.

About how the British broke the Brazilian monopoly on natural rubber. The storyline suggests a complex relation between adventure, military conquest and imperialism.

Lilian Harvey plays a young heiress in long-ago France named Madelon who is raised by her grandfather as a boy in order to frighten away fortune hunters. But when the old man dies, her guardian Cesaire wants to marry her off to the rich prefect Barberousse. She is tricked by Cesaire with the portrait of a young man (Viktor von Staal) which is presented to her as that of her future husband. But when Madelone discovers this scheme she flees, again in men's clothing. But on her route to escape, she meets the young man from the portrait and falls in love with him. But Madelone can't give up her disguise right now...

An enhanced and sentimentalized story of love, honor, rivalry, and retreat. The traditional laws of the patriarchal environment and severe conflicts of the heart. The action takes place in Herzegovina and Stolac, Bosnia. The film depicts the Bosnjak from a German point of view.

Released three days after Adolf Hitler became Reichskanzler, it was the first film to have its screening in Nazi Germany. It became a symbol of the new times touted by the Nazi regime. The title (literally "morning-red") is the German term for the reddish coloring of the east sky about a half hour before the sunrise. On patrol Captain Liers and his submarine crew sink an important British ship, but while returning to harbour, they're lured into a trap by a British vessel disguised as a neutral Danish one. They sink it after it attacks them without warning, but while they prepare to rescue survivors, a British destroyer sinks the sub. On the sea bed 60 feet down, with all but the bridge flooded, the 10 surviving crew have only 8 rescue devices. Liers orders the crew to use them, but they disobey - either all escape or nobody does.

F.P.1 is a huge airplane landing dock in the Atlantic where pilots making the transatlantic flight can stop. Yet a saboteur tries to sink the technical wonder in this classic German science fiction film from 1932. The film was also created with English and French speaking actors at the same time.

A nightclub waiter and a manicurist share the same room, he sleeps there by night and she by day. They've never meet , but they can't stand each other. Then they meet by chance, not knowing who's who and fall in love.

Illustrates both the powerlessness of the ordinary worker as well as an intimate portrait of the joys and sorrows of a small group of people in the harbor section of Hamburg.

The demonic Rasputin is poisoned but survives to continue seducing in evil ways, in this historical thriller.

In this classic German thriller, Hans Beckert, a serial killer who preys on children, becomes the focus of a massive Berlin police manhunt. Beckert's heinous crimes are so repellant and disruptive to city life that he is even targeted by others in the seedy underworld network. With both cops and criminals in pursuit, the murderer soon realizes that people are on his trail, sending him into a tense, panicked attempt to escape justice.

A sympathetic bandit chief supports the cause of freedom in Naples against the Bourbon King Ferdinand.

Mutter Krause, her daughter Erna and her son Paul live in a tenement in the poorer section of Berlin's Wedding district. Along with them lives "the Tenant", his soon-to-be bride Friede, who works as a prostitute, and her child whose name isn't revealed in the film. Mutter Krause is a quiet, long-suffering old woman who earns what little she can delivering newspapers. However, Paul is an alcoholic and spends all her money on drink. Mutter Krause can't pay back the money she owes the man whose newspapers she delivered and he accuses her of stealing and threatens her with arrest. Mutter Krause must then pawn her last valuable possession, a treasured memento of her late husband. Paul then breaks into the same pawn shop. He gets away but is later arrested. Meanwhile, Erna begins dating a young man with Communist views, who turns Erna to Communism and also helps her earn the money her mother needs by more honest means.

A pre-Depression slice of proletarian life from Weimar Germany, Harbour Drift is unusually interesting for its indifferent pessimism, rejecting even the minor rays of hope which permeate the other low-life ‘street films’ of the period. A sordid tale of poverty and greed set within a quayside milieu of crime and prostitution, the narrative centres on the quest for a sparkling pearl necklace stolen by a beggar under the gaze of a prostitute, who persuades her unemployed friend to steal it back, with tragic consequences. The story unfolds in flashback, without irony or a hint of redemption: life simply goes on. The film is remarkable for the innovative camerawork of Friedl Behn-Grund, which manipulates light and shadow to create a nightmarish atmosphere of fear and premonition.