The twelve-year-old Emil and his father are haunted by bad luck. To take a break from a series of family disasters, Emil is allowed to spend a few days with a friend of the family, the female priest Hummel in Berlin. In the train he runs across the slick Max Grundeis who anaesthetizes Emil and steals his savings of 1500 DM. When he finally arrives in Berlin, Emil and a gang of street kids, led by the cheeky girl Pony Hütchen, try to find the gangster, who haunts the posh Hotel Adlon as a hotel thief. Meanwhile, to prevent anyone from finding out about Emil's mishap, Gypsi, a member of the gang of kids, passes himself off as Emil, thus wreaking havoc on the home of the priest.
A young shoemaker is arrested for stealing a small amount of money, and is jailed for fifteen years. Upon his release, he wants to get a permit to get a job and start anew, but finds that without a job he can't get a permit, and without a permit he can't get a job. Ensnared in the absurd net of Prussian bureaucracy, he can't see any way out. That is, until he enters a thrift shop and spots a Prussian officer's uniform that fits him like a second skin...
A group of angels look longingly upon the life of humans. Berlin now is a very different place: unified in name but overrun with crime, corruption, and—in what turns out to be a key theme here—Americans.
Flanders, a famous female author, travels in 1989 after the fall of the Berlin wall into the German capital. She is deeply depressed by the events because she saw the communist state as a very good thing that has now ended. In the joy of these days she finds no one to understand her, so she has to travel back to Munich. After meeting several people, known and unknown, it seems as if there will be no way to go.
In this biopic, Marlene Dietrich leaves Berlin for Hollywood, where she establishes herself as an international star through various film roles.
Germany 1982: The country is divided into two parts. Nele, coming from West-Germany, travels to East-Germany where she meets Captain, singer of a band. They fall in love with each other, but the regime "takes care" of their relationship, meaning: They can not see each other again. Germany 1990: The country is reunited. Nele starts searching their lost love...
A story about Ulrike, a ten year old girl who is looking for a new father with energy and determination.
Ina, just released from prison, returns to the place of her childhood in search of life and meets the occasional desperado Domühl in her mother's house, which has been empty for thirty years. Hagen, a mentally handicapped resident, also ends up in this unusual landscape somewhere in the middle of nowhere south of Berlin in search of his uncle.
Inside the Kit Kat Club of 1931 Berlin, starry-eyed singer Sally Bowles and an impish emcee sound the clarion call to decadent fun, while outside a certain political party grows into a brutal force.
The two twelve-year-old girls Charlotte Palfy and Louise Kröger meet on a language trip to Scotland and discover that they are twins who were separated shortly after birth. Charlotte, the daughter of a music hall composer, is cool, self-confident and cheeky, dresses accordingly and listens to techno music. Louise, who grew up with her mother, an advertising executive, wears more "old-fashioned" clothes, is shy and reserved, but conscientious and orderly. Determined to play fate, the two swap roles - at the end of the journey, Louise travels as Charlie to her father, who works as a composer in Berlin-Kreuzberg, while Charlie travels as Louise to her mother in Hamburg, where she works in an advertising agency. The girls realize that getting their parents back together is not as easy as they thought.
Brothers Franz and Erich Sass grew up poor. Together with his brother Franz, Erich specializes in cracking safes. Erich spends the money with his hands full. In the meantime, the police have also become aware of the brothers. Pursued by Detective Fabich, they get deeper and deeper into criminal circles. A man called Adolf demands that the Sass brothers work for him. He blackmails them and has their father beaten to death. The brothers then agree to work together. However, Adolf plans to have them killed after the coup. The two brothers manage to escape; they are also able to flee from the police, who catch them while they are still breaking into the bank.
A biography of Hildegard Knef, one of Germany's biggest post-war stars.
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 notorious German serial killer is captured after committing some of the most heinous acts against humanity ever imaginable, a farmer and police officer from a sleepy rural community on the outskirts of Berlin is drawn into the case as he searches for the answers to a murder that has shaken his tight-knit community.
An American army officer working for British intelligence comes to post-war Berlin to solve a murder. His investigation is compromised when he falls for a nightclub singer, not realising she is an agent of the criminal mastermind he is on the trail of.
One day in Europe shows stories set in four European countries. All of them involve thievery in some way or the other. The protagonists are strangers in the respective country. For none of them their stay turns out as planned.
Because her husband, crime novel author Bert, prefers to spend the evenings with milieu and girl studies in the pubs, Conny files for divorce and moves with the two children from Berlin to Munich. There, she mistakes the new teacher of her daughter with the renovating carpenter, which is quite alright with the teacher as this gives him plenty of opportunity to enjoy Conny’s company. Meanwhile, however, Bert as well has started to understand how good it is to have a cosy home. He comes to Munich in order to win Conny back.
A pseudo documentary study of an archetypal German who tries to model his world according to his ideas of law and (sexual) order.
A young teenage single mother (Maggi) struggling to raise her baby daughter (Lucy) finds the weight of responsibility bearing down on her shoulders. Maggy was forced to grow up before her time. Thankfully for Maggi, her mother is always willing to help though Maggy still lives at home with her mother, it's obvious that she longs to gain some independendence. Meeting Gordon at a local club, who is a few years older, makes a living and has his own apartment. One night, after a heated argument with her mother, Maggi makes the decision to move in with Gordon. Though the pair subsequently make a sincere attempt to be good parents.and do what's best for Lucy, they soon find that taking on the responsibilities of adulthood aren't so easy when you've barely moved past childhood yourself.
German-Jewish cabaret singer Nelly survived Auschwitz but had to undergo reconstructive surgery as her face was disfigured. Without recognizing Nelly, her former husband Johnny asks her to help him claim his wife’s inheritance. To see if he betrayed her, she agrees, becoming her own doppelganger.