Seven-year-old Kayla's father dies unexpectedly on a mission in the U.S which changes Kayla's life completely. She takes on the responsibility of her broken family. She inspires the people around her with love and singing. And in the end, she manages to carve out a happy life.
The short film tells a slice-of-life story set in a family-run Chinese bakery, exploring parenting philosophies and the pressures faced by the younger immigrant generation.
"Journey to the West" is an embedded documentary film into a bus full of Chinese tourists visiting Europe (6 countries in 10 days!) for the very first time. This road movie captures with humor, poetry and spirit the cultural differences between China and Europe in a play of mirrors and contrasts. It also destroys the stereotypes about the emerging Chinese middle class and reveals what they think about the "others" who are "us", the Westerners.
Though he has managed to become a professor at an early age, a supposedly liberal young man has neglected developing his relationship skills. Even though he forms an attachment to a young woman whom he had been helping with the task of finding work and even marries her, he is appalled to learn that she is pregnant with another man's child. At the same time, his political convictions have been put to the test, and he has effectively shown that he was not as serious about them as he (and others) thought he was. Disappointed in himself and in his life, he leaves his new bride and attempts to find consolation in an affair.
This somber drama follows the troubles of a rural family who moves to the big city to have a better life. Although the family is poor, they provide lodging for an old beggar while the unemployed husband searches for work. The youngest girl steals birdseed from a parrot, while the eldest girl is close to trading sex for food. The wife believes the beggar is hiding something and finds a bag of rice in his room. The beggar dies, and the wife cooks the rice for her family. Although she has provided for her family, her feelings of guilt about the old man prevent her from keeping her food down.
A gritty political thriller set at the backdrop of the violent Naxalite movement in 70’s Calcutta.
Based on Bengali story “Ghar Bari” by Dibyendu Palit, a former revolutionary who has deserted the movement lives in fear of running into old colleagues. Meanwhile he pushes his wife into modelling, and later seamier projects, with tragic consequences.
Luisa Wagner is a successful event manager. At the same time she also manages to look after her two children, Krista and Jakob, the housework, her husband Michael and her father. When Luisa's twin sister Jenny also turns up and hardly lifts a finger to help, Luisa sees red. On an impulse, she takes over her sister's role and goes on tour with her theatre troupe in Italy. Meanwhile, Jenny assumes Luisa's chores in the home and her job, thereby experiencing not only the hurdles a mother is confronted with, but also falls madly in love with her sister's boss, Felix. Everyone is relieved when Luisa returns home after hearing of her father's breakdown. Especially Michael, who has learned to appreciate his wife anew.
When her scientist-employer is murdered, a female legal immigrant suddenly finds herself being deported via a train full of criminal aliens, g-men, reporters - and foreign agents trying to smuggle her off and into the hands of the murderous gang.
Vivian loves sex and pursues her unusual preferences in excessive affairs. Everything changes when she gets involved with the Senator for Justice Ertel, because here the boundaries between sex play and rape become blurred. She goes to court. In her lawyer Maria, she finds an understanding supporter who, like Vivian, enjoyed her freedom in her youth...
Hochzeit auf Bärenhof
Five star (hotel) is a sarcastic reference to the Pretoria prison which is central to the plot. An inmate Skollie (A nickname meaning delinquent) escapes from jail with one desire, to be united with his son again. Life outside is much different to what Skollie remembers. Still behind bars are inmates Pappa, Priester and Polka, who are doing everything to prevent Skollie from being reunited with his son, even if that means they have to kill. Skollie discovers that Pappa might be responsible for the death of his mother and he vows revenge.
Based on a real, in-flight incident in 1988, a passenger jet loses a portion of its fuselage in flight over Hawaii and is forced to make an emergency landing.
A Black Forest timber industrialist has to assert herself against male supremacy and economic difficulties in the first half of the 20th century.
Hotel Royal
Surrealist experimental film in which a foreign secret agent called "El Gringo", investigates the presence of radioactivity in some lobsters caught in a fishing village in the Caribbean. While taking a break at the hotel, a cat steals his lobster.
Brothers Martin and Paul Barnard are summoned to the family home after their father’s death, but they’re not allowed in the house until the reading of the will. They stay in the cottage occupied by their father’s servants, Adam and Nicole.