Urban Guerillas

Mostly fictional episodes in the life of famous german social-critical painter Heinrich Zille.

Berlin Kreuzberg at the beginning of the 80s. Lawyer Hanna, daughter of a good family and working as a scientific social worker, gets caught between two sides. Her conservative fiancé Konrad wants to avenge the murder of his friend Theo on the Turks, but she loves a young Turk and wants to help the foreigners with their problems. There are also gray wolves and right-wing radicals, there is xenophobia and pressure creates counter-pressure - rebellion, bomb attacks and prison riots are the order of the day. An almost predictable catastrophe is on the horizon.

In Berlin in 1961, an American soldier and a German engineer join forces to build a tunnel under the Berlin Wall in order to smuggle out refugees, including the soldier's East German girlfriend.

Sunny is the singer of a band trying to establish itself in the East Berlin music scene. They play regular gigs in small towns, but Sunny feels out of touch with the audience and with her life as a whole. She begins a relationship with Ralph, an amateur saxophonist and philosophy student, who writes her a very personal song—but his obsession with death and unfaithful lifestyle are not for her. After getting into a quarrel with a band member who harasses her and telling off a show host, she is thrown out of the band. Abandoned, she struggles to regain control over her life.

Frustrated, because he is forced to produce bad TV-shows, a manager of a TV-station, enters the station and manipulates the ratings, to initiate a TV-revolution.

Anna is persuaded by her boyfriend Paul to move from Berlin to his home town of Imma. What the notorious soccer hater doesn't know, however, is that joining his best friend Steffen's law firm is just a pretext. In reality, Paul and his buddies are there to save the soccer club he co-founded, Eintracht Imma 95, from relegation. Anna soon realizes that the players' wives have nothing to say to their soccer junkies: Artificial turf in the bedroom, Effenberg bedding and weekends on the soccer pitch. When she finds out the real reason for the move, she mobilizes her fellow sufferers to counter-attack after a fierce bout of frustration and challenges Paul and his friends to the ultimate duel on the soccer pitch. The bet is on: women against men. If the women win, soccer is over - and Paul has to go back to Berlin with Anna. Forever. If the men win, there will be no more complaining.

A posthumous look at the last days of Guenther's life as he, his best friend, and his sister let loose on a four-day binge of alcohol, drugs, and sex.

A private TV station sends its employees out to capture the dark side of Berlin. With the help of police radio, they are drawn to murders, rapes and other crimes which they then film in gory detail.

Berlin is quite often pretty dirty. But what if there is one person who takes care of that every day? We tell the story of a one-man underground department that (by its own claim) makes Berlin the coolest big city in Germany. The Authority for Urban Authenticity.

In 1943, while the Allies are bombing Berlin and the Gestapo is purging the capital of Jews, a dangerous love affair blossoms between two women – one a Jewish member of the underground, the other an exemplar of Nazi motherhood.

Wounded in Africa during World War II, Nazi Col. Claus von Stauffenberg returns to his native Germany and joins the Resistance in a daring plan to create a shadow government and assassinate Adolf Hitler. When events unfold so that he becomes a central player, he finds himself tasked with both leading the coup and personally killing the Führer.

Tough contract killers and secret organizations operating worldwide in a murderous battle for a relic that hides much more than just a simple instrument. The merciless hunt for the guitar of the "King of Rock'n Roll" leaves a trail of violence and death in its wake.

Magdalena and Michael have loved each other since they were children. But when the Nazis come to power, Michael rebels against the regime and is sentenced to fifteen years in a concentration camp. Magdalena, meanwhile, goes underground with the help of a friend and later immigrates to the Soviet Union. Michael, who has joined the Red Army, discovers on the way to Moscow that Magdalena is staying there. But when his plane lands, she is already on her way back to Germany. Michael hopes that one day, he and Magdalena will be reunited.

Paul and Paula have had bad experiences with love: Paul is financially well off but has lost all affection for his wife, and Paula leads a troublesome life raising two children on her own. They meet and discover a strong passion for each other. Life seems like a dream when they're together - but their short flights from the burdens of reality are once and again interrupted by Paul's ties to family and career.

Ewald Honig can't break his bad habit. Hardly has he crossed over into the GDR when the strapping, well-built man in his late fifties once again starts courting ladies with fraudulent intentions. His daughter Ina, burdened with the same genes, specializes in married men in their prime. Two criminologists are on the Honigs' trail, but they soon have enough to handle just dealing with each other. Meanwhile, Honig and his daughter have left their wayward path of their own accord.

Valeri Sikorski knows from his doctors that his days are numbered because of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. He wants to make a last adventure in his life and goes to England, but first he stops in Berlin to pick up his best friend Victor. But Victor has disappeared. Now Valeri's journey turns into a search for his old friend Victor.

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”.

Eyal, an Israeli Mossad agent, is given the mission to track down and kill the very old Alfred Himmelman, an ex-Nazi officer, who might still be alive. Pretending to be a tourist guide, he befriends his grandson Axel, in Israel to visit his sister Pia. The two men set out on a tour of the country, during which Axel challenges Eyal's values.

Lola receives a phone call from her boyfriend Manni. He lost 100,000 DM in a subway train that belongs to a very bad guy. She has 20 minutes to raise this amount and meet Manni. Otherwise, he will rob a store to get the money. Three different alternatives may happen depending on some minor event along Lola's run.

Kuhle Wampe takes place in early-1930s Berlin. The film begins with a montage of newspaper headlines describing steadily-rising unemployment figures. This is followed by scenes of a young man looking for work in the city and the family discussing the unpaid back rent. The young man, brother of the protagonist Anni, removes his wristwatch and throws himself from a window out of despair. Shortly thereafter his family is evicted from their apartment. Now homeless, the family moves into a garden colony of sorts with the name “Kuhle Wampe.”