Carsten Gutschmidt

He is considered to be one of the greatest German film stars, Hans Albers, known as "Der blonde Hans", a man made for the cinema. He was an actor, singer, idol of the Germans - and darling of the Nazis. Nevertheless, he could not protect his great love, the Jewess Hansi Burg. In 1938 she had to flee to London from anti-Semitism in Germany. But Albers himself stayed in Germany and continued to film, driven by a desire for a career and the call of money. In 1946, one year after the end of the Second World War, they meet again: Hansi Burg returns to the land of the murderers of her parents in the uniform of the British Army and visits Hans Albers in his villa on Lake Starnberg. He lives there with another woman. The rival has to go, then there is a tense debate. For a day and a night, the blonde Hans has to face uncomfortable questions and even more uncomfortable truths.

They were, at best mocked or ridiculed, at worst incarcerated, tortured, or even beheaded. But they would not be deterred. For decades ten thousands of women in Germany, Great Britain, in France, the U.S. and many other countries fought for their right to vote. Some used the institutions, others turned into media savvy politicians, and still others turned to terrorism, went on hunger strike, or died as martyrs. 100 years later we tell a multi-perspective and emotional story of the international fight, against all odds, for women’s suffrage as an important step towards equal rights.

Monsters have always been part of our nightmares and fairy tales. But where do they actually come from? How much of it is truth, how much is myth? Going to great lengths in this documentary, the filmmakers join scientists to explore a number of the best-known sagas and legends in the world. The search for the origins of what is likely to be the oldest legendary creature, the dragon, leads to snake pits, archaeological dig sites, gold mines and the inside of an Icelandic volcano. They also travel to Texas, hunting for traces of the “chupacabra,” literally the “goat-sucker,” a modern mythical creature with vampire-like teeth that was first spotted in Central America, and accompany palaeontologists to Kazakhstan in search of the remains of what might be the origin of the alluring unicorn, whose horn the Vikings used for trading.

August 1942: Amidst the unimaginable suffering inflicted during the blockade of Leningrad by the German Wehrmacht, an orchestra director was given an almost impossible task: to stage the premiere of Dimitri Shostakovitch's "Leningrad Symphony". The performance became a symbol of the brief triumph of culture over the barbarism of war.