The Party

An American journalist arrives in Berlin just after the end of World War Two. He becomes involved in a murder mystery surrounding a dead GI who washes up at a lakeside mansion during the Potsdam negotiations between the Allied powers. Soon his investigation connects with his search for his married pre-war German lover.

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

After a series of traumatic childhood events, a psychosomatically deaf, dumb and blind boy becomes a master pinball player and the object of a religious cult.

Katherine Watson is a recent UCLA graduate hired to teach art history at the prestigious all-female Wellesley College, in 1953. Determined to confront the outdated mores of society and the institution that embraces them, Katherine inspires her traditional students, including Betty and Joan, to challenge the lives they are expected to lead.

In the ruins of post-WWII Berlin, a twelve-year-old boy is left to his own devices in order to help provide for his family.

When a young boy comes in to see a doctor abourt a red mark on his face, the doctor's wife welcomes him into the consulting room instead. As they talk, she offers him something to eat and then notes that his manner of eating is just like that of her previous husband, who died in prison many years earlier. It turns out that the young man had been his cell mate for a year, and he tells her the story of how her husband died. She then remembers (in flashbacks) how she had helped her first husband rid himself of his sexual repression, and how she had promised him she would marry her current husband if she were widowed. It seems her doctor-husband was a man who could remain untouched through any political climate, and was much admired by her first husband. Now that her memories have been awakened by the young man's account, she ignores the repeated phone calls of her current husband and decides to rid this young man of his own sexual repressions.

Lifelong hard work for the count makes the servant Anton a cripple. Everybody calls him Crooked Anton. When, after the end of the war, the land of the count gets divided amongst the farmers, Anton receives a piece and hopes to be able to work freely. But an old debt and intrigue keep Anton and his family from finding peace. The farmers of the village begin to discover their own power when Annegret, Anton's daughter, leaves. Is a new beginning possible for Anton? This film paints an impressive panorama of the development of a minor village in Mecklenburg from the end of the war to the uprising of 17 June 1953.

The stories narrated by the film bring together individuals all over the world, spanning over sixty years and thus symbolically covering the approximate period of a single human life. Each of the stories is based on true accounts and events, summed up from newspaper articles, statements, and media announcements. Through internal monologues the collage makes up a whole which transcends any individual story.

Three years after the Hiroshima bombing, a teenager helps a group of orphans to survive and find their new life.

A melodramatic story of Lucia, who serves as a charwoman on the Podlogar family's rich farm, and makes a fuss among householder's sons, as she becomes pregnant with one of them. A decision on whether one should be forced into marriage with the pregnant charwoman and her child, ends tragically. Will Lucia be able to sustain psychological pressure, contempt and pity of the Podlogar brothers?

Veronica is a high school student studying to be a glazier, although she dreams of being a theatre actress. The only thing that she finds joy in at school is the company of her friend, Klemen and writing the script for a theatre play in her spare time together with a retired actress whom she has befriended. Her parents find it difficult to understand her acting ambitions - or rather, they would probably find it difficult, if they would bother to take the time off their busy schedules to try. Nor does anyone else understand Veronica. When all her plans go awry, she ends up in a home for juvenile delinquents. When she is released into the custody of her parents again, she eludes their vigilant guard and runs away to the country, to Klemen. Only Klemen's father makes it abundantly clear to her when she gets there that Klemen will not stand by her side either. Veronica finds herself out on the street again, where everything is possible and the future is open to her...

The life of a man who dared to unfold the corruption and mismanagement in his factory takes a wrong turn as his marriage ends, his lover leaves him and he finds himself in a psychiatric hospital. After completing his stay in this mental institution, the gates of the factory are now closed for him. Will he be forced to apologize, or blood must be shed?

How Many Years, How Many Winters!

A coming-of-age story set in Slovenian town during WW2.

At the end of WWII the Dutch resistance kills a German officer in front of the house of a Dutch family. Years after the war the young boy who witnessed the killing runs into the members of the resistance who committed the killing.

A post-WW2 story about the village largely involved in wine-making business. The peasants who claimed possessions of lands, woods, and churches after communist party seized the power hold a party where a member of so-called reactionary forces (kulaks, clergy and Axis collaborators) tries to break in and stop it.

Orphaned after a Nazi air raid, Paulette, a young Parisian girl, runs into Michel, an older peasant boy, and the two quickly become close. Together, they try to make sense of the chaotic and crumbling world around them, attempting to cope with death as they create a burial ground for Paulette's deceased pet dog. Eventually, however, Paulette's stay with Michel's family is threatened by the harsh realities of wartime.

A young academy soldier, Maciek Chelmicki, is ordered to shoot the secretary of the KW PPR. A coincidence causes him to kill someone else. Meeting face to face with his victim, he gets a shock. He faces the necessity of repeating the assassination. He meets Krystyna, a girl working as a barmaid in the restaurant of the "Monopol" hotel. His affection for her makes him even more aware of the senselessness of killing at the end of the war. Loyalty to the oath he took, and thus the obligation to obey the order, tips the scales.

After returning from a concentration camp, Susanne finds a traumatized ex-soldier living in her apartment in bombed out Berlin. Together the two try to move past their experiences during WWII.

World War II is over and Heinrich, a young German boy, influenced by the Russians, starts to act according to Communist principles in a small German village.