Germany

  • Florian Gottschick – Nachthelle AKA Bright Night (2014)

    2011-2020DramaFlorian GottschickGermany

    A drama with a supernatural edge, this genre-crossing gem finds two couples visiting a home from their past, and sexual tension that brings out the worst in each other. Long-buried grudges resurface and it seems unlikely the couples will return intact. Faced with an outcome that will upset their delicate balance of happiness, the world offers them a bizarre opportunity to correct it.Read More »

  • Christian Petzold – Roter Himmel AKA Afire (2023)

    2021-2030ArthouseChristian PetzoldDramaGermany

    Afire (German: Roter Himmel) is a 2023 German drama film directed by Christian Petzold, starring Thomas Schubert, Paula Beer, Langston Uibel and Enno Trebs. The relationship drama focuses on four people who are trapped in their holiday home on the Baltic Sea by uncontrolled forest fires.

    The film won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival. In August 2023, it was shortlisted as the German submissions for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film for the 96th Academy Awards.Read More »

  • Oskar Roehler – Jud Süss – Film ohne Gewissen AKA Jew Suss: Rise and Fall (2010)

    2001-2010DramaGermanyOskar RoehlerThriller

    Quote:
    Rise and fall of actor Ferdinand Marian, who takes the chance and stars in the anti-semitic movie Jud Süß.Read More »

  • Walter Boos – Die Schulmädchen vom Treffpunkt Zoo (1979)

    1971-1980EroticaExploitationGermanyWalter Boos

    Exploitive version of Christiane F. Euro trash teen sex drama.

    Released in the canada & the us as train station pickups. Directed by sleaze merchant Walter Boos. Deals with various teenagers who hang around the train station scoring drugs and selling their bodies. It has a gritty realistic feeling half hazardly dealing with drug abuse but not to be taken seriously. It combines PORKY’s style locker room humor and prostitution. – Taken directly from Christiane F. but has no redeeming qualities. Simply a fun 70’s sexploitation flic with young high school girls. imdb.Read More »

  • Gerd Kroske – Galera (1998)

    1991-2000DocumentaryGerd KroskeGermany

    The young French from Mantes-la-Jolie call their everyday tours “Galera”, alluding to a strenuous life with obstacles. Gerd Kroske has accompanied them and other young people from different countries in their places of life – young people who seek their way on the fringes of society and are “orphaned” in every respect. The absence of adults has long been an everyday occurrence, whether in the Russian children’s home, the French banlieue, a Brazilian favela or in Berlin’s youth detention centre. The film questions the current media images of “Generation X”. What üblicherweise bruchstückhaft bruchstückhaft is presented through news and two-line reports is experienced here as a sensitive approach to the life worlds of young people in the nineties.Read More »

  • Franz-Josef Spieker – Wilder Reiter GmbH (1967)

    1961-1970ArthouseComedyFranz-Josef SpiekerGermany

    Synopsis
    Georg, the head of an advertising company, finds Kim living in a wooden house surrounded by bogs and woods. Kim is hired to ride through Munich on his horse, poses with models outside the Feldherrnhalle. He is featured in a film an is extensively covered by the newspapers. A nun fleeing through the woods to escape from the roaring Kim, lands in a bog and is only rescued by Kim and his team after Georg has saved the rescue on film. The rescue is first glorified on a record, the record is a best-seller and Kim becomes a star…Read More »

  • Wolfgang Petersen – Schwarz und weiß wie Tage und Nächte (1978)

    1971-1980ArthouseDramaGermanyWolfgang Petersen

    Originally made for German television, this film chronicles obsessions of a man who will do almost anything to avoid losing a chess game. Thomas Rosenmund (Bruno Ganz) learns how to play chess by watching his father in a friendly game with a neighbor. His competitiveness is keyed to such a high pitch that a series of close calls in matches precipitates a nervous breakdown and he swears off the game. Instead, he turns his skills to computers. When his company calls on him to be part of a team which is pitting a computer’s chess skills against the world champion of chess, he takes it personally when the computer loses. Fired by “his” humiliation, he vows to earn the right to take on the champion himself — and does.Read More »

  • Margarethe von Trotta – Vision – Aus dem Leben der Hildegard von Bingen (2009)

    2001-2010DramaEpicGermanyMargarethe von Trotta

    The life story of the multi-talented German nun Hildegard von Bingen. The film portrays an original woman – best known as a composer and religious visionary – whose grand claims often run counter to the patriarchal world around her.

    The monks and nuns at the convent become a kind of family, offering both confidants and enemies. For example Jutta, struggling with her jealousy of Hildegard’s success, and the young Richardis who worships Hildegard both as an intellectual role model and a mother figure.Read More »

  • Lutz Eisholz – Bruno der Schwarze – Es blies ein Jäger wohl in sein Horn AKA Bruno the Black – One Day a Hunter Blew His Horn (1970)

    1961-1970DocumentaryGermanyLutz Eisholz

    Quote:
    Lutz Eisholz’s first feature film was produced at West Berlin’s German Film and TV Academy. In an experimental documentary he portrays the working class outcast Bruno S., who prowls the city as a street musician, performing his own songs. The film unfolds Bruno’s story: abandoned by his mother as a child, he was maltreated in correctional institutions in Nazi Germany. On release after WWII he found work but started performing at the same time as a self-taught musician and poet. Although incapable of “normal” human bonding, he was still able to rejoice in life. When Werner Herzog saw this film he recognized Bruno’s potential and hired him to play starring roles in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974), Heart of Glass (1976) and Stroszek (1977).
    –UCLA Library Film & Television ArchiveRead More »

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