German

Eleven moving dates, eight friends: Philipp, Wiebke, Jessica, Maria, Swantje, Michael, Thomas, Dina – all in their twenties and mutually lonesome. And always searching: For a new city, a new job, an own apartment, a new, or even an old love. The search is never-ending, and so they repeatedly find themselves at a ritual gathering: someone moving. Boxes are shifted from one side of Berlin to the other, or the length and breadth of Germany, from one abode to the next as one life is exchanged for another. In 3 ZIMMER/KÜCHE/BAD, director Dietrich Brüggemann portrays existences in which relationships, social networks and backdrops are in a constant state of flux; where best friends are the only, and therefore the most valuable constant. Humorous sketches of the self-conception of a generation for whom moving has become the symbol of a life on the go.Read More »

The African-German writer Sebastian Klein is one of the most famous Author of Germany. To promote his latest book, he is on reading-tour through Germany and also visits the little city of Prittwitz. But there, the local Neo-Nazis give him a hit on his head and Sebastian looses his memories. Instead he is parroting everything other people tell him. Sven, the political leader of a modern National Socialist Party, recognizing the opportunity and uses Sebastian as a promotion speaker against integration. When Sebastians highly pregnant girlfriend Nina is seeing him on TV, she is shocked and starts to chase him with the policeman Sascha in order to safe him from the Neo Nazis.Read More »

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The film can be best described as Käutner goes Antonioni with Fellini’s cinematographer on the camera. The critics slaughtered the film as they did with many films of the era which only get rediscovered today and it didn’t help that the author attacked during a press conference the film which he had himself written following his own novel unwisely too closely while Käutner fought against that. Don’t let that disturb you, it’s quite a remarkable film and a great showcase for the cool understated beauty of Ruth Leuwerik who was correctly labeled the German Deborah Kerr.Read More »

After his remarkable documentary about mountain farmers, We Who Dwell in the Mountains Cannot Be Blamed for Being There (1974), Zurich-born filmmaker Fredi M. Murer came down to the city to film the gray suburbs and their anguished inhabitants embedded in what he called a “fictional documentary” written in collaboration with a number of scriptwriters (including writer Adolf Muschg). Set in a black and white world with an air of the fantastic, the story revolves around a young couple confronted with a mysterious epidemic the government is trying to cover up. A portrait of an urban Switzerland utterly disconnected from its roots, Grauzone (1979) is one of the most powerful works about the Swiss society of control that prefigures the social movements that had their heyday in Zurich in 1980 (“Züri Brännt”).Read More »

Shortly after German reunification, three residents of a quiet area north of Berlin talk about their plans and attempts at new economic beginnings amid the changes brought by the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Christian Petzold’s second film is his only documentary thus far, made with the help of fellow “Berlin School” auteur Thomas Arslan. Interviewing residents of former East Germany about economic change, the director probes a subject that would serve as an undercurrent to his later genre masterpieces.Read More »

It is March 1945 and 15-year-old Günter Walcher still believes the war will end in victory. During a manhunt for a runaway immigrant laborer, Günter proves himself the most capable searcher. He turns the man over to the local police who then shoot the foreigner. Günter is proud of himself and, although his father has recently died in battle, the boy volunteers to be sent to the front.
On his first mission, Günter comes under attack from the Russians and he flees. When the Russian army marches in to Günter’s village, the boy is arrested for the murder of the laborer. His experiences throw him into intense confusion. Soon he asks himself: How can he live with his guilt?
Based on the story “Die Anzeige” (The Report) in Egon’s Richter’s book Ferien am Feuer (Vacation by the Fire).Read More »

A video cassette is inserted: A toddler in a paddling pool somewhere on the beach. Parents and grandparents scurry around. Pictures of Senem’s first visit to Turkey, so she tells us. This is the beginning of a search for home. Through interviews with her parents and grandparents, the filmmaker takes us through the ups and downs of the life of three generations of Turkish guest workers in Germany. The stories are accompanied by images of everyday life in Turkey. Today the family has returned to their homeland, only Senem has remained in Germany. Where does she belong? Sober reflection meets poetic collage, trying to find peace in the space between here and there.Read More »

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Franz Lang (Götz George) was one of the commandants of the Auschwitz concentration camps. He was also a man whose honor consisted of following the orders given to him by his superiors as perfectly as possible, whatever those orders might be. This German-made movie chronicles his career beginning in World War I, and shows in detail how he came to occupy the infamous position of Auschwitz commandant. Told in an understated manner without extraneous moral commentary, the story continues up to his interrogation at the end of the war by an American officer, and shows how it was possible for this fairly ordinary man to, without any particular anger or hatred, personally execute or cause to be killed hundreds of thousands of people.Read More »

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Franz Lang (Götz George) was one of the commandants of the Auschwitz concentration camps. He was also a man whose honor consisted of following the orders given to him by his superiors as perfectly as possible, whatever those orders might be. This German-made movie chronicles his career beginning in World War I, and shows in detail how he came to occupy the infamous position of Auschwitz commandant. Told in an understated manner without extraneous moral commentary, the story continues up to his interrogation at the end of the war by an American officer, and shows how it was possible for this fairly ordinary man to, without any particular anger or hatred, personally execute or cause to be killed hundreds of thousands of people.Read More »