German

Synopsis:

‘Pietro Ponz lives a happy life in the mountains on the Swiss-Italian border with his mother Lamberta. No one but his mother knows that Pietro is a girl, a deception that Lamberta was forced into by a series of tragedies almost twenty years previously. Not long after her husband Joseph Ponz died, Lamberta also lost her fragile infant son, Pietro. Whilst mourning this double loss, she began an affair with Bolzano, a notorious smuggler. After Bolzano was killed by the customs men, Lamberta gave birth to his child, a little girl that she decided to pass off as her son Pietro, in the hope of securing an inheritance from her husband’s wealthy parents. Now that Pietro is fast coming of age, his tutor and grandmother are adamant that he should be sent to a religious school. Pietro escapes from the school and joins a gang of smugglers…’
– James TraversRead More »

In 1945 Amrum Island, 12-year-old Nanning hunts seals, fishes at night, and farms to help feed his family. Life feels idyllic on this windswept isle until peace reveals an unexpected danger closer to home.Read More »

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The everyday life and problems of a working class family are treated in this documentary, produced together with the Bruder family. Unskilled workers’ hopeless situation reproduces itself generationally because of social discrimination that confronts them at every turn.Read More »

Synopsis:
In 1980s Vienna, a dissident artist’s life is turned upside down when her estranged partner reappears after prison, prompting a perilous journey back to Czechoslovakia that threatens her newfound family..Read More »

Mannesmann was a German industrial conglomerate. It was originally established as a manufacturer of steel pipes in 1890 under the name “Deutsch-Österreichische Mannesmannröhren-Werke AG”. (Loosely translated: “German-Austrian Mannesmann pipe mills AG”). In the twentieth century, Mannesmann’s product range grew and the company expanded into numerous sectors – starting from various steel products and trading to mechanical and electrical engineering, automotive and telecommunications. From 1955, the conglomerate’s management holding with headquarters in Düsseldorf was named Mannesmann AG. – more (on wikipedia)Read More »

Self-imprisoned in an apartment which is reminiscent of a theater stage, Otto Weininger recalls certain events of his life before shooting himself on October 4, 1903.Read More »

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Züli Aladag’s critically acclaimed, but controversial movie deals with the conflict of Can, son of Turkish immigrants, and the Laubs, a supposedly liberal middle class family. Simon Laub, professor of literature, and his wife Christa, real estate agent, live with their son Felix in a safe and quiet Berlin district. However, Felix gets in trouble with Can, son of a Turkish greengrocer, who starts to tyrannize the family. As he is annoyed by the boy’s attacks, Simon -despite his political correct attitude- humiliates Can, which starts a vicious circle of anger and violence…Read More »

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The spirit of Tarkovsky is never far from this rebarbative fable of guilt and atonement by Pavel Lounguine.

A prologue set in 1943 reveals how a young Russian sailor, captured by the Nazis, saved his own life by shooting his captain. Thirty years later the man, Anatoly (Pyotr Mamonov), lives a monkish existence on a remote island in the White Sea, begging God to forgive his “sin” and baffling his fellow monks with his strange behaviour. The film’s austere palette of white, black and icy blues are contrasted with the fiery reds of the furnace Anatoly tends – his personal hellfire or a purifying flame? Nothing much is certain in this bleakly enigmatic tale, which moves at a pace most will find unacceptable. Those who stay the course will perhaps, like the monk himself, want to take a long rest afterwards.Read More »

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In the Eastern Front of World War II in 1943, a five-man crew of a German Tiger tank is sent on a secret mission far behind the fiercely contested front line. Fueled by the Wehrmacht’s methamphetamine, their assignment increasingly becomes a journey into the heart of darkness.Read More »