German

Jonas is already head of the family at just 12 years of age. He has been helping his two younger siblings and supporting his mother, Sabine, since his father left. Sabine is very loving towards her children but she often loses her patience and disappears into her room for the day. Mysterious demons drive her to spend a weekend away to relax in the “sunny valley”. But the weekend grows into weeks in which the three children hear nothing from their mother. Food and money have long since run out, the house has become more and more like a haunted castle: a spiderweb house. Jonas tries his best to maintain the appearance of an intact family. On the hunt for something to eat, he meets a young man, Felix Count of Gütersloh, who speaks in rhymes and declares himself to be not quite right in the head. Rather like a guardian angel, he takes Jonas under his wing and shows him how to get by in a world without adults. The film is less a social drama than a modern-day fairy tale shot in black and white. The audience is immersed in the eerily beautiful world of the children which unfolds its own particular magic.Read More »

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Mifti, age 16, lives in Berlin with a cast of characters including her half-siblings; their rich, self-involved father; and her junkie friend Ophelia. As she mourns her recently deceased mother, she begins to develop an obsession with Alice, an enigmatic, and much older, white-collar criminal.

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A group of inhabitants of a correctional colony for people of small stature raises a riot against the local order. Tired of adhering to the many rules that require good behavior from them, they decide to become bad. Their immediate leader (also a dwarf) is forced to take refuge in one of the premises while waiting for the police to arrive. Meanwhile, the rioters are having fun: they beat dishes and glasses, start a car and eventually break it, kill a big pig, scoff at blind dwarfs living next door, arrange cockfights, set fire to flowerpots with their favorite colors, and so on.Read More »

Synopsis:
First part of two-film adaptation of Thea von Harbous novel “The Indian Tomb.” The focus of the elaborate adventure film is a dramatic love triangle: Chandra, the Maharajah of Eschnapur, lives happily with his wife Sitha. But Sithas former lovers Sascha from Germany in the palace arises, the revival of passion between the two
grounds for malicious intrigue. Prince Ramagani of secretly planning a coup d’etat, uses the occasion to the Maharajah of Sascha and Sitha raise. Both flee around
the world to Berlin, constantly haunted by Chandra and his entourage.Read More »

Synopsis:
Second and last part of the filming of Thea von Harbous Roman: After their daring escape from the jealous and the Maharajah Chandra intriguing Prince Ramagani reach Sitah the Maharani and her German lover Sascha back to India.
In the Palace of Eschnapur is the decisive confrontation between the main actors: Ramaganis coup attempt by Sascha and Sitah – given their lives for Chandra sacrifices – frustrated. Sascha Ramagani finally kills and is reconciled with the Maharajah.Read More »

After three short films, Roland Klick finally wanted to shoot a real feature-length film in 1966. It almost worked out with that. But then the production company Atlas Film went bankrupt during the shooting of Jimmy Orpheus. That’s why this 50-minute film isn’t Klick’s originally planned film, but only his torso. Jimmy Orpheus also clearly shows this. And it does the film astonishingly good! This is a similarly successful creative accident as Jean-Luc Godard’s feature film debut Breathless, which came to the cinemas six years earlier. It was finished, as planned by Godard, but should be shortened afterwards at the instigation of the producer. Thus Godard radically snipped away everything that was not absolutely necessary to understand the plot – and invented the jump cut in this way.Read More »

Stars: Sten Jacobs, Anna Altmann, Jaspar Fuld, Nina Splettstößer, Stephan Bürgi, Natascha Zimmermann, Felix Witzlau, Tobias Frieben, León Delor

A haunting portrait of a well-established German family living on the outskirts of Berlin in their ideal world, but are slowly shaken by external influences.

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The architect and head of the family Markus Larsen secretly lives out his bisexual tendencies while his wife Christine and their 11-year-old daughter Elisabeth drown in unbearable loneliness. When Markus gets to know the 12-year-old son of a colleague, he feels an immediate affection for the boy. Slowly, Markus begins to approach Johannes and creates an intimacy of which he increasingly loses control. While his wife and daughter are damagingly affected by their symbiotic relationship, Johannes is playing his own secret game which, in the end, leads to disaster for every family member.Read More »

Two young characters in this story of rebellious youth are named after two Germans, brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl who were imprisoned and executed for their anti-Nazi stance during World War II. In this film, the rebels do not have such a clear-cut enemy but nevertheless, they cannot accept the way life is heading in Austria of the 1950s and they revolt by stealing, mugging, and trying out terrorist methods (bombs). Their future seems to be inexorably heading on a collision course with the forces that have “locked them out.”Read More »

Stories about workers determined to use their own initiative

On October 29, 1972, the first part of Fassbinder’s five-part family series flickered across West German TV screens. Over the next months, the public broadcaster ARD showed all five episodes, in each case on a Saturday evening in the prime-time slot: I. Jochen and Marion, (October 29, 1972), II. Grandma and Gregor (December 17, 1972), III. Franz and Ernst (January 2, 1973), IV. Harald and Monika (February 18, 1973), and V. Irmgard and Rolf (March 18, 1973). Ratings during this time ranged between 45 and 60%, figures comparable with those for the broadcaster’s top-rating crime series TATORT.Read More »