Vaterland (2002)

documentary

A group of young people in Halle-Neustadt moving aimlessly between the concrete blocks once built as a socialist model housing estate. Familiar certainties dissolved along with the GDR. Even though there were hardly any foreigners in Saxony-Anhalt, a dull aversion to everything that hadn’t been part of daily life until then began to spread. The general dissolution, perceived as a threat, is countered by apparently clear world views. When Thomas Heise won the “Documentary Film Prize 1992” at the Duisburger Filmwoche, the laudation ended with the assumption that the film would probably provoke disagreement. It turned out to be true.

Two rival gangs try to obtain the five parts of a dangerous formula held by five scientists.

These Encounters Of Theirs divides 10 non-professional actors into couples, then has them take turns in declaiming the Dialogues With Leuco, Cesare Pavese's abstract, philosophical work.

Documentary by Thomas Heise.

The director films the street where he lives in St. Petersburg, for a whole year, documenting the changes caused by the celebration of its 300th anniversary.

Having lost her place among the social elite, a widow remarries and starts a family.

Solar System is a film about disappearance. It is a portrait of daily life in the indigenous community of the Kollas in Tinkunaku in the mountains of northern Argentina.

A man who is dissatisfied with his senseless existence in his family-life and social status steals the uniform of a policeman and then enters the Oktoberfest. Now he is somebody, he is important, he can help, people respect him, etc. His wife, other relatives and some friends start to follow him while he gets some new acquaintances. (IMDB review)

An architect is assigned to modernize a squatted house in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin. But then he meets a young student who is member of a grassroots initiative trying to preserve the quarter. He falls in love with her, although this puts him into conflict with his job. Following his heart, the architect soon changes sides and supports the inhabitants in their struggle against the real estate speculators.

Stalingrad, 1942: just as he is complaining about the "blockheads" who are in control, a German named Herbert gets hit. Fast forward forty years after the war to Munich's Hofgarten, where in front of the patched-up ruins of the Army Museum Herbert reappears, mistakenly believing he is still in Stalingrad, which the victorious Germans have destroyed and rebuilt in the image of Munich

In Paris, Sophie and Daneel make a solid couple. Nothing, it seems, can separate them - until the day when Sophie tells her partner she has organised a surprise trip to Bulgaria. Daneel refuses to go, but Sophie insists and soon discovers just why her soul mate was so reluctant to set foot in the country...

Opening in remote Kurdistan, Eine Hand Voll Gras introduces us to the impoverished family of 10-year-old Kendal (Arman Inci). In desperate need for cash to fund his older sister's wedding, Kendal's parents allow themselves to be persuaded by Kendal's uncle (Ercan Durmaz), who lives in Germany, to let the boy go to Germany to make some money. Upon their arrival in Hamburg, the uncle is arrested and Kendal ends up in the temporary care of Hellkamp (Oliver Korittke), a cabby with a shady past. ...

On 30 April 1945, dictator Adolf Hitler, his wife Eva Braun, and prominent members of the Third Reich live out their final hour in the Führerbunker.

Mutters Maske aka Mother's Mask is a free adaptation of the film Opfergang (1944) aka The Great Sacrifice of Veit Harlan. Schlingensief exposes his source material's dangerous proximity to kitsch and camp by reducing the genre conventions known from Harlan, Sirk, Fassbinder & Co to the level of a daily soap: set within a noble family from the German Ruhr, Schlingensief's story revolving about Willy von Mühlenbeck's tragic love to terminally ill neighbor girl Äls (Susanne Bredehöft) and the inheritance intrigues by his evil brother Martin von Mühlenbeck (Helge Schneider) creaks with melodramatic devices and self-conscious dialogues. Rather than being a mere spoof, "Mother's Mask" is perhaps Schlingensief's purest black comedy.