German

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 »

An ageing swimming champion falls for a failed writer after answering an unusual personal ad in director Rudolf Thome’s existential love story. Impulsively responding to an ad placed by an awkward young writer Johannes, middle-aged Johanna Perl falls hopelessly in love. On the surface Johannes is a balding failure, but Johanna sees something in her new lover that inspires her like never before. Soon enough, the unlikely new couple decides to move in together, and even Johanna’s daughter Sophia finds romance with a handsome new beau. While all is well at first, the blissful new living arrangement is soon shattered when Johannes pens a best seller and begins sleeping with his publicist, leaving his older lover to wonder if she has finally lost her mind. …You Told Me, You Love Me ( Du hast gesagt, dass Du mich liebst ).Read More »

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Harry Baer plays a newly released ex-convict who slowly but surely finds his way back into the Munich criminal underworld. Meanwhile, his attentions are torn between two women (Hanna Schygulla and Margarethe von Trotta) and the friend (Günther Kaufmann) who shot his brother. This sensual, artfully composed film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder is a study of romantic and professional futility.Read More »

Leslie, a talented ballerina, has been having an almost incestuous relationship with her mother’s lover for quite some time. Torn between sexual desire and disgust, Leslie’s relationship with the tyrannical and voluptuous Maurice soon weighs on the (actually only pro forma) relationship between Maurice and Francine. One day, Leslie’s salvation comes in the form of the restless, roughly the same-age performance artist Brian. When both young people fall in love with each other, Maurice reacts jealously and Leslie has to decide with whom she wants to stay.Read More »

1779. Eight-year-old Ludwig van Beethoven, called “Louis”, is already known as a musical prodigy. He learns to go his own way – much to the dismay of the people around him. Some years later, he meets Mozart during times of political upheaval. The unconventional genius and French Revolution are sparking a fire in Louis’ heart; he doesn’t want to serve a master – only the arts. Facing times of family tragedies and unrequited love, he almost gives up. However, Louis makes it to Vienna to study under Haydn in 1792, and the rest is history. Who was this man, whose music has since touched countless hearts and minds? At the end of his life, the master is isolated by loss of loved ones and hearing. Surely though, he was way ahead of his times.Read More »

Berlin, Deutschlandhalle, November 20 th 1971. Kinski emerges into a lone spotlight on an empty stage. Shoulder length hair, plain jeans, a shirt with flower and polka dot patterns. No set, no stage effects, no costume. By reciting his own version of the New Testament’s “Jesus Christ Saviour”, he realizes a project well over 10 years in the making.

It is the time of the Hippie movement, and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical “Jesus Christ Superstar” is celebrating a sensational success in Germany as well. It is also a time of nonviolent resistance.Read More »

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Berlin, the Romantic Era. Young poet Heinrich wishes to conquer the inevitability of death through love, yet is unable to convince his skeptical cousin Marie to join him in a suicide pact. It is whilst coming to terms with this refusal, ineffably distressed by his cousin’s insensitivity to the depth of his feelings, that Heinrich meets Henriette, the wife of a business acquaintance. Heinrich’s subsequent offer to the beguiling young woman at first holds scant appeal, that is until Henriette discovers she is suffering from a terminal illnessRead More »

When her sibling Zara suffers a nervous breakdown, the introvert Eva is forced to take on Zara’s job as a Foley artist. She struggles to create sounds for a commercial featuring a horse, and then a horsetail starts growing out of her body. Empowered by her tail, she lures a botanist into an affair, through a game of submission. Piaffe is a visceral journey into control, gender, and artifice.Read More »

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The movie’s plot is based on the true story of a group of young computer hackers from Hannover, Germany. In the late 1980s the orphaned Karl Koch invests his inheritance in a flat and a home computer. At first he dials up to bulletin boards to discuss conspiracy theories inspired by his favorite novel, R.A. Wilson’s “Illuminatus”, but soon he and his friend David start breaking into government and military computers. Pepe, one of Karl’s rather criminal acquaintances senses that there is money in computer cracking – he travels to east Berlin and tries to contact the KGB.Read More »