Ronald Zehrfeld

Eleven years ago, an 8-year-old girl disappeared from a small German town on the German-Czech border. Although her body was never found, nor were there any traces of blood or DNA evidence, a mentally-disabled man was coerced to confess to the crime. Even though he withdrew his admission of guilt two days later, the forced confession was enough to convince the ruling judge. The responsible investigator Altendorf was discharged so that the investigation could be sped along by another colleague.Read More »

The relationship between writers Ingeborg Bachmann and Max Frisch.Read More »

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Rock ‘n’ roll comes to Germany just ahead of the Berlin Wall in “The Red Cockatoo.” Stylish period piece is weighed down by a too-familiar love triangle, generating nostalgia for a difficult time not nearly as successfully as clear predecessor “Good Bye Lenin!”

Unlike helmer Wolfgang Becker’s “Good Bye Lenin!,” “Cockatoo” will work best for those with some knowledge of the early days of the German Democratic Republic and tension generated by the Wall throughout the country.Read More »

“In this epic-scale saga of life on both sides of the law, Max Riemelt plays Marek Grosky, a Russian Jew who immigrated to Germany in the 1920s. Grosky is one of a large number of Russians who have fled their homeland and settled in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin. While Marek has become a police officer in Berlin, his sister Stella (Marie Baumer) is married to a high-ranking crime chieftain, and the cop finds himself caught between two worlds, torn between his devotion to duty and his ties to his family. As a war rages between criminal factions in Charlottenburg, Marek witnesses the death of his brother and falls for a Ukrainian woman who has been brought to Germany to work as a prostitute. Im Angesicht des Verbrechens (aka In Face Of The Crime) was originally created as a ten-part series for German television; it was later re-edited into a pair of feature-length films which were screened as part of the 2010 Berlin International Film Festival. “
by Mark DemingRead More »

In this vivid historical drama set in 1980s East Germany, two dockworkers and best friends who dream of escaping the repressive regime are forced to choose their loyalties when the state police promise them safe passage out of the country — if they inform on their co-workers and union leader. Read More »

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A smoky duet between double-bass and piano at the start of Christian Petzold’s Phoenix promises a dose of film noir. That promise is complicated, if not exactly broken, by what follows. But then, this is a movie all about disguises, reinventions and deceptive appearances.
It begins with a monstrously tantalising scenario. In mid-1940s Germany, a vehicle is halted at night by US soldiers. A figure is whimpering in the passenger seat, their face concealed by blood-soaked bandages. Perhaps we are in for some Eyes Without a Face-style horror, then, rather than noir? Half-wrong again.Read More »

Summer in the GDR in 1980. Barbara, a doctor, has submitted an application to emigrate to the West. She is punished by being posted away from the capital to a hospital in a small town. Jörg, her lover in the West, is busy planning her escape via the Baltic Sea. It’s a waiting game for Barbara. Her new flat, the neighbours, summer and the countryside no longer hold any charms for her. Although she is attentive to her young patients in the department for pediatric surgery under her new boss, André, she is deliberately cool to her colleagues. Her life, she thinks, will begin later.Read More »