When petty criminal Luke Jackson is sentenced to two years in a Florida prison farm, he doesn't play by the rules of either the sadistic warden or the yard's resident heavy, Dragline, who ends up admiring the new guy's unbreakable will. Luke's bravado, even in the face of repeated stints in the prison's dreaded solitary confinement cell, "the box," make him a rebel hero to his fellow convicts and a thorn in the side of the prison officers.
Bizet's Carmen gets a modern adaptation. Seducting, provocating, sensual. All the ingredients for a perfect drama. With her charm, Karmen gets out of many situations.
When former Green Beret John Rambo is harassed by local law enforcement and arrested for vagrancy, he is forced to flee into the mountains and wage an escalating one-man war against his pursuers.
A disc jockey, a pimp and an Italian tourist escape from jail in New Orleans.
The true story of a white South African racist whose life was profoundly altered by the black prisoner he guarded for twenty years. The prisoner's name was Nelson Mandela.
A Victorian surgeon rescues a heavily disfigured man being mistreated by his "owner" as a side-show freak. Behind his monstrous façade, there is revealed a person of great intelligence and sensitivity. Based on the true story of Joseph Merrick (called John Merrick in the film), a severely deformed man in 19th century London.
What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)
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.
While escaping from prison to be with her lesbian friend, a 19-year-old girl breaks her ankle and is picked up by an ex-con, with whom she begins a passionate affair. She finally turns to prostitution and robbery to support herself.
Lichter is an episodic tale from Hans-Christian Schmid about the life on the border between Germany and Poland. The film sheds light on the everyday stories of escape and desperateness.
In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.
A packed cruise ship traveling the Atlantic is hit and overturned by a massive wave, compelling the passengers to begin a dramatic fight for their lives.
A man entranced by his dreams and imagination is lovestruck with a French woman and feels he can show her his world.
The name "Voss" is given to a high-ranking Nazi criminal who flees from Germany to South America after the end of the Second World War, like hundreds of thousands of other people. The escape route leads across the Alps and South Tyrol to Genoa and from there by ship to a supposedly better world in South America. Most of these refugees were "displaced persons", i.e. people who had become homeless. Many Nazi criminals also used the same escape route to reach safety. The film depicts the conflicts that arise during the flight, but also in South America, where perpetrators and victims meet again. The main characters of the film, he a murderer, she a survivor of Nazi terror, help each other on the run and experience for the first time what it means to love. Only gradually does it become clear who has which past and whether their love can still endure.
A stranger enters into and forever alters the life of a couple. He claims to be pursued by certain authorities who intend to prevent him from disclosing a secret that only he holds, whence the title. Is he lying, or insane - or is he telling the truth? Who, if anyone, is after him? And what *is* - the secret?
The Nazis, exasperated at the number of escapes from their prison camps by a relatively small number of Allied prisoners, relocate them to a high-security 'escape-proof' camp to sit out the remainder of the war. Undaunted, the prisoners plan one of the most ambitious escape attempts of World War II. Based on a true story.
A man befriends a fellow criminal as the two of them begin serving their sentence on a dreadful prison island, which inspires the man to plot his escape.
Just before the Berlin Wall is built, a young East German worker tries his personal and professional luck as a barkeep in West Berlin. A realistic love story set during Germany’s post-war economic miracle, which here does not fulfil its bright promises.
When a young boy comes in to see a doctor abourt a red mark on his face, the doctor's wife welcomes him into the consulting room instead. As they talk, she offers him something to eat and then notes that his manner of eating is just like that of her previous husband, who died in prison many years earlier. It turns out that the young man had been his cell mate for a year, and he tells her the story of how her husband died. She then remembers (in flashbacks) how she had helped her first husband rid himself of his sexual repression, and how she had promised him she would marry her current husband if she were widowed. It seems her doctor-husband was a man who could remain untouched through any political climate, and was much admired by her first husband. Now that her memories have been awakened by the young man's account, she ignores the repeated phone calls of her current husband and decides to rid this young man of his own sexual repressions.
A shady lawyer attempts a Christmas Eve crime, hoping to swindle the local mob out of some money. But his partner, a strip club owner, might have different plans for the cash.