The plot is based on the dramatic fate of the Red Army commander Aleksei Ivanovich Pavlov. Having been captured in January 1942 and being among the displaced persons, he didn't immediately decide to return to the USSR. Having rolled around the foreign country for 17 years, Aleksei nevertheless...
The years of the tsar’s adolescence and youth were permeated with deadly danger coming from some of the Boyars, the rebellious Streltsy and Tsarevna Sophia who aspired for power. But already at that early time Peter demonstrates a profound, bright intellect, a strong will and the sense of...
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...
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.
The worker Frank Raban lives with his wife and young daughter in a room in his mother's apartment. He builds his own home and sometimes procures materials illegally. When an after-work bricklayer wants to be paid in forum checks, Frank strikes outraged and ends up in front of the public prosecutor....
During the Napoleanic Wars, members of the Prussian Lützow Free Corps steal a French war chest from the house of collaborator Kerstinn, but their captain Friesen is captured and sentenced to death. But Friesen is saved by French Sergeant Fleuron and they flee the occupied city together. Kerstinn's...
Jürgen Matthes, Horst Knüpfer, Peter Vorberger - three men of different ages who are entrusted with the same large-scale IT project. In the context of this project, they begin to reflect on their work, the quality of human relationships and the meaning of life in general.
The Ruhr area in November of 1918. 13-year old Achim Wolters and his friends get their hands on some potatoes on the market. They want to surprise Achim′s father, who works on a mine sweeper boat, with a decent meal. But Achim′s father does not show up – an informer at the train station has...
GDR border guard Gunter Rist is a young man from humble homes. During a swimming competition he meets Penny, a professor’s daughter from a good family, and they fall in love. However, their different social backgrounds get in the way of their happiness: Penny’s friends make it obvious that they...
Berlin at the end of the 1940s. Anneliese Weyher is working as a switchboard operator. She is living with her aunt after losing her parents in the war – a stroke of fate that has thrown the young woman off course emotionally. Indifferently, she is doing her work; her private life consists of an...
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...
Two men want to escape the hustle and bustle of Christmas in the city and travel to the countryside. However, it's not easy to find accommodation on the spur of the moment. And so they end up in a rather spartan hostel…
In the late fifties a large industrial complex was built near Schwedt, in the GDR. This low budget film tells about the voluntary participation of the brigades of the Freie Deutsche Jugend in the building up …
High-school senior Peter considers the adults around him to be hypocritical, self-congratulatory, and immersed in the past. He gets suspended for writing an essay that his teachers consider to be a challenge to the state. Just Don't Think I'll Cry became one of twelve films and film projects-almost...
A depiction of class conflicts in Germany between 1918 and 1945. The Spartacist Erwin is shot by officers in 1918, and his pregant working-class bride Marie begins a new relationship with social democrat Geschke. Erwin's son Hans grows up to be a communist like his father, leading to bitter hatred...
A film about the experiences of a cab driver who drives a young, heavily pregnant woman who has collapsed in a store to hospital. The encounters during the subsequent search for the future father so that he can take the expectant mother's things to the hospital are shown. The GDR leadership argued...
