Michael Verhoeven

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Young Sonja is accused of murdering her boyfriend Manfred. The film reveals her background, which remains hidden in court: the half-orphan girl becomes pregnant by Manfred, has an abortion and is sent to a reformatory for it. Manfred gets her pregnant again and then leaves her; desperate and humiliated, she shoots him. In court she remains defiant and silent. On the last day of the hearing, a deus ex machina appears: the figure skater Hans-Jürgen Bäumler, Sonja’s great idol, descends from the sky and floats with her over the roofs of Regensburg.Read More »

The title “Tische” (German for tables) is a reference to the failed peace talks between the US and Vietnamese governments in Paris (1968-1969), where the only thing the two parties could agree on was the shape and size of
the conference table.

This experimental short by Michael Verhoeven contrasts pictures of tables with scenes from the Vietnam war.Read More »

Michael Verhoeven shot the film on 16mm in the Vienna studio of painter Hundertwasser, for the first time with his wife Senta Berger as an actress.

Due to “Indecent Exposure” Verhoeven and his main actor were imprisoned for three days. The film was temporarily confiscated for its obscenity.Read More »

From the director of The White Rose and The Nasty Girl, comes this stunning adaptation of Hungarian author George Tabori’s autobiographical, somewhat surreal novel. Shifting between Nazi-occupied Budapest and present-day Berlin, the film artfully depicts the true story of how Tabori’s mother Elsa escaped deportation to Auschwitz.Read More »

Synopsis:
A four man US fireteam on patrol seizes a passing young vietnamnese girl and continue to torture, rape and kill her. Only one soldier refuses to take part in it and reports this incident to his superior, who dismisses it as simple wartime incident. As a consequence for his report, the soldier has to fear for his life. Later, the perpetrators are convicted, although subsequent appeals reduce their sentences significantly.
The plot takes place in a bavarian forest and reenacts a real war crime that happened in the vietnam war. The soldiers wear US uniforms, have authentic names but speak with a pronounced bavarian accent – a conscious directing decision known as Brechtian distancing effect.Read More »