A movie based on the novel of the same name by K. Fedin. The action takes place in Germany and Russia and tells about the events of the First World War, the Revolution and the Civil War. The main character, the artist Andrei Startsev, has to go through a lot before he finds his place in the new...
After causing a deadly hit-and-run motorcycle accident, Conny Schenk spends two years in prison, where he is able to complete a printing apprenticeship and is released early for good behavior. While he is still on probation, money is stolen at the company where he works and everyone is quick to...
East Berlin, late 1970s: Because she doesn't really have any particular career aspirations, Marta becomes a nurse. And since true love is a long time coming, the 17-year-old seduces Monty, the young man next door. Then there are her parents' marital problems. Marta is in the middle of the exciting...
October 1918: Karl Liebknecht is released from prison and Berlin workers celebrate his release. Although WWI is almost over, the German Kaiserreich in vain sends its last reserves to the slaughter. The working class is in a rebellious mood; the uprising of Kiel’s sailors against war and...
Fritz Weineck, a worker′s son from Halle, loves music – and dreams to make a living out of it one day. When his friend Alfons, a World War I veteran, gives him a trumpet as a gift, Fritz seems to come closer to fulfil his dream. But then, Fritz realizes that after the end of the German empire...
Bad planning and shortages prevail on an East German construction site. Foreman Hannes Balla uses unconventional methods to overcome the problems. New Socialist Unity Party secretary Werner Horrath is charged with bringing the rough-and-ready builder crew into line. The task seems doomed to fail as...
This elaborate two-part television film features a section from the life of communist worker leader Ernst Thälmann. It begins with the bloody riots on May 1, 1929 in Berlin, in which police officers shot at demonstrating workers, and ends with February 7, 1933, when Thälmann appeared as a speaker...
A train travels through the vastness of Russia, a train with German prisoners of war returning home, and Viktor Kleist, a young German communist from an intellectual home in Munich, travels back home with them. During the journey, the stations on his way to Lenin wake up again.
In this German drama, Brock, a railroad inspector, witnesses a robbery at a train depot. He recognizes the thief, but turning the man in would mean acknowledging he knows him, thus revealing his own complicity with the Nazi war machine. When Brock’s daughter and her boyfriend begin to question...
During a weekend spent on the island Hiddensee, the snobbish high school student Jan, who has just been expelled from school, meets Christine. Christine is impressed with his bragging attitude although he just uses it to hide his insecurity and his remorse about the fact that he was sacked....
The "Astoria", an English luxury liner, collides with a freighter shortly before the end of its voyage and threatens to sink. Captain Mitchell, successful and envied, sets in motion an expensive rescue operation. He manages to avert a catastrophe and bring the passengers and the ship to safety. But...
A wild story set in eighteenth-century Prussia. Alexander can do everything that a real devil of a fellow must be able to do: ride, shoot, love and devise clever plots. As a result, he is able to climb the ladder from herder to chamber master, where he makes a fool of the feudal lords.
Two 17-year-olds, Werner Holt and Gilbert Wolzow, are pulled out of school and into Hitler's army. Gilbert becomes a fanatical soldier; but at the front, Werner begins to understand the senselessness of war.
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...
A cheerfully turbulent GDR TV comedy about a group of elderly people who organize their lives with courage and cheerfulness. Trude and her male senior citizens want to redesign a dilapidated old construction trailer in their new residential area to create a nostalgic arbor. Inspired by the term...
FRAGILE is the story of a woman who is killed in a car crash and is given one day more to spend with the people she loves. FRAGILE is a short parable about the things we often take for granted until they are gone, like friendship and love from those that are close to us. It is a film about the...
The corner Schönhauser Allee in East Berlin is the main meeting-point for a group of adolescents. Dieter is a construction worker who falls in love with Angela. She, in turn, spends time with the clique whenever her mother is occupied with her new lover. "Kohle" stays away from home to avoid his...
The school authorities want to read success stories in director Joachim Faber's reports. But they cannot simply be produced on an assembly line. Pupils, for example, use the wrong tone. The matter draws circles until the superiors finally talk about refusal to work. Director Faber is caught between...
