Director Wolfgang Staudte who left East Germany in 1953 to make movies in West Germany, takes a few swipes at the West German judicial system in this fairly effective courtroom drama about the murder of a four-month-old baby. Police almost immediately arrest the mother Ingrid who is the mistress of...
A moving saga focusing on the women in a family that spans three generations and almost 70 years of German history, from the Wilhelmine period through the end of WWII. This film shows that it takes a combination of hard work, political consciousness and family work in tandem to face the tragedies...
In 1930s Berlin, a woman’s life unravels as her unemployed husband succumbs to Nazi propaganda and joins the Storm Troopers, while her brother's anti-Nazi stance leads to his death, prompting her to confront her beliefs and make a risky choice.
On the Faroe Islands, people eke out a meagre existence by catching birds. Merchant Brause pays them little and does a good business. This comes under threat when Dr. Sten Horn suspects that the dangerous annual plague, which kills dozens of inhabitants, is transmitted by birds. Brause forces the...
Lifelong hard work for the count makes the servant Anton a cripple. Everybody calls him Crooked Anton. When, after the end of the war, the land of the count gets divided amongst the farmers, Anton receives a piece and hopes to be able to work freely. But an old debt and intrigue keep Anton and his...
Berlin 1952, seven years after WWII. Four women are looking for a good man and happiness in the divided city. Their destinies are loosely connected through one person: the West Berlin dandy and womanizer, Conny.
Professor Sonnenbruck is a scientist who is not particularly interested in politics. Even the meeting in 1943 with his former assistant Peters does not change him. He does not betray Peters, who has escaped from a concentration camp, but that is already enough for him. But after the war...
Several men have been murdered lately, mostly rich lovers on their way to meet their mistresses with gifts of fine jewelry. To fight this scourge, King Louis XIV decides to create a special court named "La chambre ardente", designed to find and punish the perpetrators of such heinous crimes. An...
Elisabeth, wife of a landowner, has kept from her husband for twenty years that their daughter is not his. Rather, she is the result of an affair with a musician she was dating shortly before their marriage. Now this man, by now a famous concert pianist, enters her life again. Elisabeth resists the...
