In the forests of the Ore Mountains, on the border with Bohemia, a gang of smugglers is up to mischief. Anyone who dares to oppose them is murdered in cold blood. The locals are paralyzed by fear of the ominous bush ghost that is said to be behind it all. Then a stranger turns up at the remote...
In 1903, Jan Anskath and his half-brother Martin are living in Rajgorod at the border between Russia and Prussia – Jan on the Russian, Martin on the Prussian side. Both are occasionally smuggling stuff over the border. But while Jan acts from political conviction and is smuggling illegal writings...
In a small village in West Prussia in the 1870s, Germans, Poles, Gypsies and Jews live together as neighbors. One night Johann, a German mill-owner, secretly opens the dam gates and floods the mill of his Jewish rival Levin. After his business is ruined and his calls for justice go unanswered,...
At the end of the 19th century, the Wyoming Oil Company has established itself in the vicinity of Wind River City at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, where they have been illegally pumping oil from Native American territory. One of the company's greedy agents, Mike Allison, kicks out both his white...
A senior professor is kidnapped in the park by residents of a veterans home. Once there, he is asked to invent a "rejuvenating machine" to restore their youth.
Railway employee Fritz Marr is not regarded well by his superiors. It is the year 1920, and trains regularly pass the railway hub of Erfurt to the East to secretly transport weapons for the fight against the young Soviet Union. Marr knows about this and wants to mobilise other workers to stop these...
In 1794 Bützow, widow Hornborstel, a top goose breeder, presses Mayor Hane to marry her. Rebuffed, he bans free‐range geese under a “goose edict.” Enraged, she enlists revolutionary‐minded Magister Albus to rally citizens. They rise for goose freedom, the duke deposes Hane, installs a new...
After 50 years, Marek remembers his dangerous adventure as a five-year-old, when he and his friend Itzek left a Polish transit camp one night in 1942 – a few days before their evacuation to Auschwitz – to go get the toys they forgot at the ghetto. Based on Becker's personal memories and his...
Vienna, 1813-1819: Beethoven (played by Donatas Banionis) is at the peak of his fame. Orchestras all over the world play his music, but he lives modestly and is dependent upon private patrons. Nagged by his patronizing brothers, spied upon by officials for his republican beliefs and faced by his...
Das russische Wunder (The Russian Miracle) (1963) is a two-part East German documentary directed by Annelie and Andrew Thorndike. The documentary chronicles Russia’s dramatic transformation from the Tsarist Empire to the Soviet Union, covering key historical moments including the 1917 October...
At the beginning of the Second World War, Czech music student Honsik comes to Germany from Prague to join a "foreign worker company". After rescuing a boy from the rubble of a bombed-out house, he himself is seriously injured and taken to a hospital in Stralsund. There he is regarded as a...
Four directors - four styles - four episodes, all relating the events of a single night which has entered the history books: August 12-13, 1961. There are thousands of complex narratives connected with the frontier drawn through the middle of Berlin, and each episode relates the story of a...
Germany 1932, constant fights between Communists and Nazis tear the country apart. When a Communist is found dead, the police accuses another Communist being his murderer. But the Communist youth group follows another trail - the murderer left a characteristic boot print at the scene of the crime.
In 1914 Berlin, bank heiress Leonore Wahl and struggling Munich student Werner Bertin fall passionately in love, defying class and her parents’ expectations. Their idyll is shattered by the outbreak of WWI: Werner, swept up in patriotic fervor, is conscripted to the Western Front, while Leonore,...
Berlin in the 60s. The construction of the Berlin Wall not only divides the city, but also separates the Rechlin family. While mother Ingelore lives with husband Hannes and the youngest son in the eastern part of the city, the young, married daughter Beate lives in West Berlin. Even when she gives...
Ralph grows up in pre-war Dresden as the eldest son of a principled and orderly streetcar conductor. With the rise to power of the Nazis, the war, the collapse and the hesitant new beginning, his firmly established middle-class world is also thrown off course. His father is one of the first to be...
