Josef Bierbichler

Mein Freund der Scheich

A small Bavarian village is renowned for its "Ruby Glass" glass blowing works. When the foreman of the works dies suddenly without revealing the secret of the Ruby Glass, the town slides into a deep depression, and the owner of the glassworks becomes obssessed with the lost secret.

A portrait of a single day in the late summer of 1956, toward the end of Bertolt Brecht's life, as he prepares to leave his lakeside home, surrounded by the women who form his extended family.

Accepting a prize, architect Georg Winter explains that an architect has the good fortune of measuring every completed building against the rightness of his original idea. Soon Georg himself is forced to take stock of the achievements and mistakes he has made in his personal life. An intense drama in which the four members of the family travel to a mountain village to bury Georg's mother. They get stranded in bad weather. This unexpected isolation throws new light on the past and present life of the parents and the two almost-adult children.

Despite advancing age, rural businessman Franz has remained fit and energetic, but serious mental illness and financial problems mean that this hitherto ordinary man one day finds himself on a journey to Nairobi to get his money back, and perhaps his human dignity as well.

Brand, an author, who falls in love with Angela, his terminally ill wife's nurse and blunders into a dangerous spiral of passion and jealousy. A vindictive husband, an insistent chief inspector, a farsighted priest and a proud wife entrap Brand in a maelstrom of persecution, destruction and obliteration which can only end in life or death. It's a quest for redemption, the force which drives us all.

A thriller directed by Christian Görlitz.

Sieben Erzählungen aus der Vorgeschichte der Menschheit

Political satire about the billion-euro loan to the GDR in 1983, which was arranged by Franz-Josef Strauß and Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski to save a bankrupt bank.

The story of former Bayern Munich president Kurt Landauer, a Bavarian jew ousted by the National Socialists and brought to the concentration camp of Dachau, where he survived to come back and start to rebuild his old club after World War II.

Der unsichtbare Freund

Documentary about actor Josef Bierbichler.

Triumph der Gerechten

40-year Maria is living in a monotonous and deadlocked marriage with her husband. In addition, she has to take care of her ill despotic father. One day, she falls in love with her sensitive neighbour Dieter. But her attempt to leave her gloomy everyday life behind leads straight into tragedy.

Set in a sleepy Austrian mountain village, ex-detective Simon Brenner has grown weary of his job repossessing cars and embarks on an extended getaway to the countryside. But before long he becomes embroiled in the convoluted world of the locals of a supposedly quiet town.

The film is based on the figure of the police inspector Simon Polt of the Austrian author Alfred Komarek.

Munich Heinz and Herbert wants to escape the torturous confines of their home by swimming across the Atlantic.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl is to blame in Germany and has to go away without violence. The homeless Hick takes up the idea and demonstrates the abolition of Kohl.

In this surrealist film director Picasso can awaken from the dead. He steals a paintings painted by himself of a couple of wealthy psychiatrists. When Picasso meets Takla Bash, a patient of the psychiatrists, Picasso falls in love. Although it is his own daughter, he remembers an incredible love affair, in which a film with a blue cow plays a role. In the majority of the paintings shown in the film are works of Herbert Achternbusch.

Außer Kontrolle

Angela Merkel's decision in autumn 2015 to open the borders for refugees split the country - some praised the moral stance, others criticized the surrender of sovereignty. Yet what would appear to be well-planned activity is in reality a policy of muddling along, chance, trial and error. The Driven Ones is a chronicle of the refugee crisis which shows that the political actors are being driven along, crushed between self-imposed constraints and events that have spun out of control.

A renowned artist must uncover a young dancer's secrets in order to truly capture her likeness for a commissioned work.

Lene Thurner is standing on a train platform in Munich. She has to decide: back to Berlin where she lives, or toward the south, where at the foot of the Alps her family lives on the lonely farm “Hierankl”.

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

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)

Der Komantsche

A filmmaker (Achternbusch) is just released from prison and has to make a living with his craft again. He is followed by a reporter who wants an interview and winds up at an inn called "Zum Neger Erwin," run by a woman whom he convinces to be the leading lady in his planned production. As the story continues, the filmmaker finds ample excuses to pan the financial powers that be and to paint the benighted and talented seekers after funds as slaves to the funding process.

A series of events unfold like a chain reaction, all stemming from a minor event that brings the film's five characters together. Set in Paris, France, Anne is an actress whose boyfriend Georges photographs the war in Kosovo. Georges' brother, Jean, is looking for the entry code to Georges' apartment. These characters' lives interconnect with a Romanian immigrant and a deaf teacher.

Ein Dorf sucht seinen Mörder

Wildfeuer

Hedi is the new neighbor of Iva, who raises her daughter Sofia by herself. The two women start a relationship and Iva is desperately in love with Hedi. Suddenly Iva's father appears. Hedi feels strongly attracted to him. It seems that only one world exists for Hedi. Her own.

Several comedy situations are strung together for this offbeat satire. An unassuming businesswoman is discovered to be the mastermind behind a terrorist organization, and a disgruntled waitress has looks that can kill, literally and not figuratively speaking. In another tacky passage, played as a reoccurring gag, an official is infected with the AIDS virus after suffering a bite from the businesswoman.

Die Olympiasiegerin

Kampftag

When 17-year-old Ben visits his father Heinrich in Marrakech, it is the start of an adventurous journey through a foreign country with a picturesque charm and a rough beauty where everything appears possible — including the chance that father and son will lose each other for good, or find one another again.

In the Bavaria of the 1980s, a father and his son compare their respective views on a family past heavy with resentment and unsaid.

Der junge Mönch

Young blonde translator Rebecca lives with her boyfriend ski instructor Marco in a mountain villa owned by her friend, nurse Laura. Rene, local cinema projectionist, steals Marco's car and gets into a car crash with local Theo, whose daughter, after being in coma for a time, dies. Rene suffers from partial short term memory loss and starts a relationship with Laura. Meanwhile Marco is looking for the man who stole his car and Theo - for the man who killed his daughter...

Having fathered an illegitimate child with his lover, Marie, feckless soldier Franz Woyzeck takes odd jobs around his small town to provide some extra money for them. One of them is volunteering for experiments conducted by a local doctor, who puts Woyzeck on a diet of peas. This serves to drive him close to madness, and the discovery that Marie is involved in an affair with the local drum major exacerbates the situation. Pushed too far, Woyzeck resorts to violence.

A docu-drama about tetrachloro-dibenzo dioxin, later known as 'Sevesogift', sprayed on thousands of tons of vapor in Vietnam 'Agent Orange', and the involvement of the later Federal President, Richard Karl Weizsäcker, who was hiring manager when production was moved to another plant because of massive health problems of the workers, but claims to be unable to remember anything, in these crimes.

Wilhelm Tell

Martha and Betty have known each other for twenty years and they have decided to breakthrough. But while Martha realizes that her father has only faked his death wish in order to see the great love of his life again on Lake Maggiore, Betty mourns her stepfather Ernesto, who supposedly died years ago.

Jesus (played by the director) returns to present-day Bavaria, walks around Munich in a somewhat dazed manner and strikes up an affair with a nun, arguing that they are married anyway. Therefore, he refers to himself as "Ober" (waiter), obviously the male form of "Oberin" (Mother Superior). He occasionally transforms into a snake when being afraid and is finally carried up into the sky by the nun, who transforms into a bird of prey. (IMDB review)

Heidi

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

Ohne einander

Der Brandner Kaspar und das ewig' Leben

Feature documentary about Christoph Schlingensief's political party/art project "Chance 2000".

Thirteen German directors present short films exploring the state of their country.

Three people rob a bank to help a day care center that's in debt. Wolf is captured, Werner identified, police suspect Christa is the third. She and Werner ask Hans, a clergyman, to launder the money and give it to the kindergarten. He refuses. They try Ingrid, Christa's friend, who tries to help, but the school rejects the money. When tragedy strikes Werner, Hans helps Christa bolt to a collective in Portugal. Ingrid visits her; their relationship makes the collective nervous, so she returns to Germany and ceases living in hiding. The police are still looking for her and so is a witness to the robbery, Lena, a bank clerk. Lena's interest brings Christa's second awakening.

An aged tailor recalls his life as the schoolteacher of a small village in Northern Germany that was struck by a series of strange events in the year leading up to WWI.

A respected small-town physician has brutally killed his wife, thus ending a four-year martyrdom from which he could not escape by any other means...

Tatort is a long-running German/Austrian/Swiss, crime television series set in various parts of these countries. The show is broadcast on the channels of ARD in Germany, ORF in Austria and SF1 in Switzerland.

Das Konto

Grimme-Preis-Verleihung

Deutscher Filmpreis

Durch die Nacht mit … is a German documentary film television series produced by ZDF for Franco-German television channel ARTE. Locations are mainly in France or Germany. The title of the French version is Au cœur de la nuit. Two Celebrities spend an filmed evening together. One of them is the host who sets the location and the program. There is no moderator.