Jugendweihe

Ballade vom roten Mohn

In the style of a documentary this tragic comedy tells the story of a relationship crisis between two married couples and their longing to break out of their miserable daily lives. In this East German post-wall movie Andreas Dresen introduces the sad everyday life of two couples from Frankfurt an der Oder in a honest and tolerable manner.

OSTKREUZ tells the episodic story of 15-year-old Elfie, who literally and metaphorically inhabits a no-man’s-land between the two Germanies shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The film deploys a neorealist aesthetic to reinforce the difficulties confronting the girl, and by inference, Germany.

In a small town in Northern Germany, a penniless German veteran is offered a job as a deliveryman by an alcoholic Turkish entrepreneur, through which the former meets the latter's wife.

Vergiss Amerika

Zeit der Fische

Plantagenstraße 19

Ete and Ali are discharged from the army. Since Ete knows that his wife is having an affair, he doesn't want to go home. Ali tries to persuade his friend to stand up for himself and to kick the other man out. But since Ete obviously lacks courage, Ali himself goes into action and gets rid of the rival lover. At first, Mary and Ete seem to reconcile, but repairing their marriage won't work.

Cold War adversaries Col. Jack Knowles and his Russian counterpart, Col. Valachev, are stationed on opposite sides of the German-Czech border. Both men are responsible for a group of troops in their remote settings, and both have been shaped by their combat experiences and a shared aversion to their superiors' ways of doing things. After a defector is killed, things escalate into a full-fledged battle with serious geopolitical ramifications.

The supremely world-weary Lemmy Caution, last seen in Godard's "Alphaville" (France/1965), has several strange encounters while trying to make his way from the former East Germany to "the west."

Eva Jensen is a female carpenter form Hamburg who wants to make a new start on the Baltic Sea coast in eastern Germany. She tries to buy a workshop with a view of the sea offered for sale by Heide, who rents out beach chairs. Unfortunately, Heide’s ex-husband vetoes the sale. In trying to understand his reasons, Eva comes across a painful family secret from the days of the GDR. And in other respects too, the newcomer from the West faces prejudice in the village, although her skills are urgently needed. Fish-seller Christian is also interested in the workshop, which Eva just sees as fair competition. Then they discover a common passion, kite-surfing, and unexpectedly grow closer.

A young, naive and enthusiastic theater director named Kai comes to a grim provincial town to put on Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Although the lethargic theater company shows no interest in the play, his spirit remains undaunted.Meanwhile, it is fall 1989. The world is changing and somewhere, far away in the capital, a revolution is taking place and it seems that wishes might come true. Great hopes emerge in the little town and unexpected events overtake Kai's mutating production.

After a breakdown, Rita returns to her childhood village in 1961. As she recovers, she remembers the past two years: her love for the chemist Manfred, ten years her senior; how his enthusiasm about his new chemical process turned to bitter disappointment in the face of official rejection; how he escaped to West Berlin a few weeks before the Wall was built and hoped that she would follow him …

Elated by the Italian attitude to life, family Struutz returns to Bitterfeld and experiences a shock: In the turmoil of the reunification her house must give way to a golf course. Hope Udo teacher, his wife Rita and daughter Jacqueline through the surprising inheritance of a factory near Dresden. But of market economy, the staid Saxons unfortunately have no idea. Help comes in the guise of adventurer and condoms dealer Charlie, who works as a "business consultant" and gives Udo a Rock & Roll crash course in capitalism - with unsurpassed success.

An eccentric East German inventor and defector travels to Los Angeles, California to sell a prototype revolutionary new car that runs on vegetables and produces no pollution, but he runs into one madcap situation after another to find a buyer and financier for mass production.

December 1981: Helmut Schmidt, chancellor of the FRG, visits the chairman of the state council of the GDR, Erich Honecker. The experiences with the visit of Willy Brandt in Erfurt in 1970 have warned the state leadership: Euphoria for a federal chancellor is out of the question this time. For December 13th, the protocol plans a visit to Güstrow. The Christmas market, the Barlach memorial, and the cathedral of Güstrow are on the agenda. The enormous machinery of the ministry of state security is set into motion in order to ensure the “safety of the guest”. Erich Mielke: “Never before, such a high effort was necessary as here in Güstrow.” People are temporarily arrested, inhabitants placed under house arrest, Stasi employees dressed up as “visitors of the Christmas market”. And like that, the media was supposed to get presented with a favourable image of the GDR. A reconstruction of three hours of state visit to Güstrow.

Schulz & Schulz

The brothers Kipp and Most set off to inherit their grandmother's estate. Along the way, they meet Viktor, a deserted Russian soldier who kidnaps them, and Nadine, who joins them voluntarily. On their way to their inheritance, the protagonists get into some seemingly hopeless situations.

The story of hip hip behind the iron curtain.

Based on a true story, Mrs. Ratcliffe's Revolution is the tale of a family from Bingley in Yorkshire, who defect to East Germany. Here they find a nightmare of rationing, censorship and the most spied upon people in history rather than the Marxist utopia they were expecting. But if they thought getting in was difficult wait until they try to get out.