Love, Deutschmarks and Death

In the midst of the transition towards reunification and a market economy, two teams meet for the last time in the final of the FDGB Cup shortly after the 1990 Volkskammer elections: favorites Dynamo Dresden and Polizeisportverein Schwerin. Matthias Hufmann and Benjamin Unger take a look back 30 years later.

Emma Freese is desperate when her husband Alfred falls ill at the Howaldtswerke in Kiel. How is the family supposed to get by without their wages? The war has scarred this generation, but now things are supposed to be looking up. The workers want their fair share and are fighting for an income that also gives them room to live. In October 1956, 34,000 metalworkers in the shipyards and factories of Schleswig-Holstein walk off the job to fight for justice and their dignity. This strike is still regarded as the toughest and longest in Germany. Employers and politicians stand in the strikers' way.

In 1945, 160 German cities lay in ruins and the loss of millions of lives, billions in material assets and countless cultural treasures was mourned throughout Europe... With the question “How could it happen?”, the film goes back to the year 1914, when the “primal catastrophe of the 20th century” took its course with the First World War.

The Stammheim trial against the leadership of the first generation of the RAF was one of the most elaborate in the Federal Republic of Germany. Through this trial, Stammheim also became a place of identity for the RAF. The docudrama uses the perspective of Horst Bubeck, who as a prison officer in the cell wing had the most intensive contact with the prisoners, to shed new light on the history.

It was a foundational myth of the GDR that it was anti-fascist and free of Nazis. But was that really the case? The film takes a critical look on the actual way the brown heritage was dealt with in the GDR.

DDR - die entsorgte Republik

The destruction of the traditional legal system is probably one of the lesser-known yet essential goals of the Nazi state. The aim was to establish the supremacy of the "people's community" over the individual by subjugating the judicial system. The documentary looks at the careers of four people who were actively involved or became victims.

Driven by extensive archive material and interviews with those who know her, this is the astonishing story of how a triple outsider – a woman, a scientist, and an East German – became the de facto leader of the “Free World”, told for the first time for an international audience.

It is an unknown chapter of the German post-war history: On April 23rd, 1949, the kingdom of the Netherlands occupied German soil as a pledge for demanded war reparations. Part of the annexed territories was also the small municipality of Elten. While the people of Elten were initially afraid of the occupation, the time “with Holland” actually became a miracle of prosperity and economy about which many people from Elten still rave today. The occupation period ended with the largest organized smuggling in the history of the federal republic of Germany. The Documentary shows this in never before released 8 mm footage!

On February 26, 1920, Robert Wiene's world-famous film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari premiered at the Marmorhaus in Berlin. To this day, it is considered a manifesto of German expressionism; a legend of cinema and a key work to understand the nature of the Weimar Republic and the constant political turmoil in which a divided society lived after the end of the First World War.

Tenants of one old building in the centre of Münich are featured in this film: most of them are foreigners who work in Germany as "guest workers" (Yugoslavs, Italians, Turks, Greeks etc.). In their mother tongue, each of them tells who he or she is, and briefly talks about their major worries, new hopes and plans for the future.

Documentary film with play scenes about the rise and fall of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919 from the perspective of various well-known poets and writers who experienced the events as contemporary witnesses.

Documentary about the end of the regency of Kaiser Wilhelm II., Germany's last emperor.

Prejudices, ignorance, and racism still leave their mark on the everyday life of black Germans, respectively Europeans, until today. How do Afro-Germans deal with their history? Which colonial-racist patterns still shape our society today? With insights into various historic epochs, it is made clear that THE history of the Black people does not exist. And neither exists THE history of white people.

The film talks about the rise and fall of the two most influential protagonists in GDR-politics. In succession, over long stretches even together, Ulbricht and Honecker determined the course of the GDR, of course without ever getting out of being a satellite state to the big brother in Moscow. The film looks for the caesura and crucial points in the power game between Ulbricht and Honecker.

Film journalist and critic Rüdiger Suchsland examines German cinema from 1933, when the Nazis came into power, until 1945, when the Third Reich collapsed. (A sequel to From Caligari to Hitler, 2015.)

The rut of Dalmatian hinterland changes with the arrival of returning guest workers, and things they bring along: cars, radios and new way of life.

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In 1946, just after the end of World War II, a secret organization of Holocaust survivors plans a terrible revenge: since the Nazis have killed millions of Jews, they will kill millions of Germans.

Documentary about Kurt Landauer, the long-time Jewish president of FC Bayern München, who led the club to its first German championship, was persecuted and forced out of office by the Nazis, and rebuilt the club after the war.