Ottokar Runze

In Germany, jazz had a voice: Inge Brandenburg. This is the story of a woman in the 1950s and 1960s, when there was no place in Germany for self-assured women with international aspirations, a dramatic performance style and an emancipated attitude to love.

A singer flees from Nazi Germany, travels to Paris and befriends a young writer, his lover and a professor.

Three children and their Grandpa are on a kayak-outdoor trip in the middle of nowhere, when their Grandpa suffers a heart attack in the wilderness - to rescue themselves and their Grandpa the children have to help themselves and fight their way back to civilization.

A 13-year-old German boy, Robert, (Max Kullman) sets out to try and find his father, who's in Turkmenistan. On his arrival there he meets up with a local boy (Murat Orasov) who agrees to help him, but they are abandoned by their adult guides and must fend for themselves.

A run-down former radio producer persuades two quarrelsome 1950s stars to try their comeback on nationwide television...

A run-down former radio producer persuades two quarrelsome 1950s stars to try their comeback on nationwide television...

Ironies abound in this extremely sad melodrama about Elif (Zuhal Olcay), a Turkish immigrant in Germany who has been sent to prison for murdering her abusive husband. At the time of her imprisonment, she has never ventured outside the Turkish community, and even there has had no friends because of the demands her husband placed on her. She speaks no German. Now, in a place which most people find to be hell on earth, she gains a never-before known taste of freedom among these strangers, who don't even speak her own language. Unfortunately, as a "guest worker," she is horrified to discover that she is soon to be transferred to the horrific prisons of Turkey and will stand trial there for her crime, which will be much less understandingly dealt with in her home country than it would have been in Germany. The false paradise she must say goodbye to is her German prison.

72 years old Martha Jellneck lives alone in a small apartment in Hamburg. Since she's hampered in walking, she never leaves her home. Her only contacts to the outside world are the young social worker Thomas and a neighbor boy who walks her dog. When Thomas tells her one day that Franz Laub, another one of his clients, has his birthday, she becomes suspicious: that was also her half-brother's name and day of birth - only that he died in WW2...

Mrs Bartolotti doesn’t really like children. She is therefore completely taken aback when she receives a son in the post: Konrad. Konrad is actually delivered in a tin! He is dreadfully tidy and almost perfect and Mrs Bartolotti is very chaotic. She actually becomes so fond of him, however, that she never wants to let go of him again, even if the weird people from the tin factory are already looking for him...

Herbie Melbourne is a poor schlemiel who is inadvertently caught between the Devil and the deep blue sea in this German farce about a cab driver assigned to bring a "comrade" back to the East German side of the Berlin wall, a passenger who is dead to the world, permanently, when he arrives. Herbie the cabbie is recruited by the KGB and East German Intelligence to help them discover who murdered the man in his back seat. After arriving on the West German side of the divide, Herbie is then recruited by the CIA and West German Intelligence to become a counterspy, for double what the other side is paying him. As Herbie seems to have no viable way out of this mess, he goes to a therapist for help. Reaching into her bag of tricks, she gives Herbie a small bottle he can sniff when in need of self-confidence, an act guaranteed to put him on top of any situation. Now Herbie is a cabbie, a KGB agent, a CIA agent, and a bottle sniffer -- and he is falling in love with his gorgeous therapist.

During the final days of the First World War, Officer Menis does his duty in defending the battle flag of the defeated Austro-Hungarian empire, while his fellow troops, a motley gang recruited from several different countries not loyal to the royal family, simply try to survive by any means possible.

In this docudrama, police in the countryside near Berlin attempt to trick a confession out of a Polish guest worker for the 1927 murder of an eight-year-old girl.

Documentary short by Ottokar Runze.

In this German film, inmates guilty of a prison murder are put on trial before a court consisting of other inmates. The trial is given the full formal treatment it might receive in a civilian setting. The key point in this film is that these are the actual murderers admitting their actual crimes before a judges' panel consisting of their peers: actual prisoners at the same institution. Having no force of law, the trial proceeds without reaching a conclusion. That is something the viewer is asked to provide. This movie won a Silver Bear from the 1974 Berlin Film Festival.

In this German film, inmates guilty of a prison murder are put on trial before a court consisting of other inmates. The trial is given the full formal treatment it might receive in a civilian setting. The key point in this film is that these are the actual murderers admitting their actual crimes before a judges' panel consisting of their peers: actual prisoners at the same institution. Having no force of law, the trial proceeds without reaching a conclusion. That is something the viewer is asked to provide. This movie won a Silver Bear from the 1974 Berlin Film Festival.

In this German film, inmates guilty of a prison murder are put on trial before a court consisting of other inmates. The trial is given the full formal treatment it might receive in a civilian setting. The key point in this film is that these are the actual murderers admitting their actual crimes before a judges' panel consisting of their peers: actual prisoners at the same institution. Having no force of law, the trial proceeds without reaching a conclusion. That is something the viewer is asked to provide. This movie won a Silver Bear from the 1974 Berlin Film Festival.

Strange fortune hunters are behind a girl's murder in this Edgar Wallace tale.

A doctor goes to meet a beautiful girl at a park bench near a wooded area. When he arrives, he finds her battered body lying next to a stream! He then finds himself to be the prime suspect. Who's the killer?

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.