DDR - die entsorgte Republik

Ich will da sein - Jenny Gröllmann

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.

Kommen Rührgeräte in den Himmel?

The life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who survived the Nazi reign as a trans woman and helped start the German gay liberation movement. Documentary with some dramatized scenes. Two actors play the young and middle aged Charlotte and she plays herself in the later years.

Six million Jews died during World War II, both in the extermination camps and murdered by the mobile commandos of the Einsatzgruppen and police battalions, whose members shot men, women and children, day after day, obediently, as if it were a normal job, a fact that is hardly known today. Who were these men and how could they commit such crimes?

Am Todesstreifen: DDR-Grenzer erzählen

It was arguably the deadliest conference in human history. The topic: plans to murder 11 million Jews in Europe. The participants were not psychopaths, but educated men from the SS, police, administration and ministries. The invitation to the meeting at Wannsee came from Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office. The Wehrmacht's campaigns of conquest in Eastern Europe marked the beginning of the systematic murder of Jews in Poland and the Soviet Union. In mid-September 1941, Hitler made the decision to deport all Jews from Germany to the East. Although there had been transports before, Hitler's order represented a further escalation in the murderous decision-making process. Persecution and discrimination had been part of everyday life since 1933. But as a result, the living conditions for the Jews in the Third Reich became even more difficult, among them the Berlin Jew Margot Friedländer, born in 1921, and the Chotzen family.

A documentary on the late American entertainer Dean Reed, who became a huge star in East Germany after settling there in 1973.

A locomotive journey traversing the North to the South of the German Democratic Republic on the eve of its dissolution. Labourers, punks, mothers, intellectuals, young and old are implored to reflect on their life choices, the sacrifices they've made, and their place in the world. Despite everything, hope persists.

It was the biggest escape in the history of the Berlin Wall: in one historic night of October 1964, 57 East-Berliners try their luck through a tunnel into West Berlin. Just before the last few reach the other side, the East German border guards notice the escape and open fire. Remarkably, all the refugees and their escape agents make it out of the tunnel unscathed, but one border guard is dead: 21-year-old officer Egon Schultz.

In October 1987, the documentary film collective Amber Films from Newcastle became the first British film crew ever allowed to shoot in East Germany. They filmed the workers of the state-owned fishing concern in Warnemünde and a brigade of crane operators at the state Warnow dockyards. Just two years later, East Germany was history, including most of the jobs it once provided. Twenty-five years later, in 2014, the filmmakers returned to an utterly different Rostock. They visited the people they had filmed in 1987. Together, documentarians and subjects look at excerpts from the earlier film, and talk about the enormous changes the men and women experienced, how they dealt with them, and how they feel today.

Portrait of the spokesman of the student movement and extra-parliamentary opposition Rudi Dutschke, who died on December 24, 1979 from the late effects of an assassination attempt. The film is not limited to the mere biography of the extra-parliamentary politician, but also depicts the political environment as well as the late effects of the student movement. In retrospect, it condenses into a picture of a highly politicized society that had not yet begun its retreat into the private sphere.

Daniel lives in Bernau, a small town north of Berlin.This film tells this 21-year-old’s story and describes the radical right-wing milieu in which he grew up. In his candid portrait of how right-wing radicalism breeds, Daniel explains how difficult it is to break out of a vicious circle of violence, self-hatred and a right-wing extremist frame of mind.

Former "Titanic" satire magazine editor Martin Sonneborn takes an undercover trip around Berlin and discovers the East-German mentality and what is left of the socialist German Democratic Republic.

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.

In 1989, thirteen GDR scientists and technicians set off from East Berlin to the Georg Forster research station in the Antarctic. During their expedition the Berlin Wall fell on November 9th. Cut off from the images that go around the world, the men can only experience the historical events passively. When they returned in the spring of 1991, their homeland was a foreign country. The documentary reconstructs the thoughts and feelings of the East German researchers on the basis of eyewitness accounts, diary excerpts, letters, film material, grandiose landscape shots from the location of the action and unique photos to make the consequences of the events tens of thousands of kilometers away on the small GDR expedition in the middle of the eternal ice tangible.

Cem Kaya’s dense documentary essay celebrates 60 years of Turkish music in Germany. An alternative post-war history that is at the same time a musical Who’s Who – from Yüksel Özkasap to Derdiyoklar and Muhabbet.

Die Mamais

At Hotel Astoria, the former hotspot of Leipzig, guests were served champagne and turtle soup while the Stasi listened in. Animated memories from times gone by.

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.