This film is set in a medieval mill town in the Harz mountains. The greedy and brutal millman and his accomplices, the castle steward and the mayor, set fire to a forest mill that the farmers used for processing their grain. Without their mill, the farmers must now rely on the millman's services....
Otto, a feckless Everyman, tries to adjust to the postwar travails of his defeated nation. Stymied by black-market profiteers and government bureaucrats, Otto begins fantasizing about a happier life at the end of that ever-elusive rainbow.
Set during the rise of the Nazi regime, Elisabeth Maurer and Hans Wieland enjoy successful careers as actors in Berlin. Confident in her career, Elisabeth, who is Jewish, ignores the advice of a colleague to leave Germany in the face of increasing anti-Semitism. Believing that he can protect her if...
The story of Johann Friedrich Böttger, an apothecary’s apprentice and alchemist’s assistant. Fleeing from the Prussian King, he goes to Saxony, where King Frederick August the Strong takes him to a fortress and demands that he create gold. Böttger is equipped with everything he would need for...
Germany in 1949: The residents of the Thuringian village Hunsdorf are still heavily influenced by archaic superstition and explain unusual events with preternatural powers. The same happens when pigs again and again disappear from different farmyards. The village residents firmly believe that...
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.
The stubborn old skipper Heinrich Borchert refuses to recognize the progress of the new era. Sailing for the DSU is out of the question for him. He is a private ship owner - and will remain so! In order to pay off the mortgage on his barge "Marie", he takes more cargo on board than is reasonable...
During the unloading of the freighter "Florida", West German dock workers discover napalm bombs instead of the specified precision machines - and a deceptive maneuver by the American occupying forces: the workers had already refused to unload the ship in France, where it was named "Chicago". It was...
Director Brakke has good reason to be happy: he has just received the news that his son, Theo, won first place in the local boat race. To be sure, he had forbidden his son to take part in the competition, because the son's grades in school are substandard. In the end, Brakke sees no other way...
The mechanic Behnke wants to join the Nazi party to secure a good living. However, after his Jewish neighbors have been taken away, he changes his views. Trying to remain "a non-political man," he withdraws from reality and becomes a Nazis laborer.
On a barren and stormy island, fishing families eke out a meager existence on what they can catch during summer, and what washes ashore during winter. But little has been washing ashore of late, and their situation worsens. Elders recall how twenty years ago, when the lighthouse keeper’s beacon...
A stuffy old civil servant is forced to retire during World War II, but when his son, a Navy submariner, is lost at sea and his city is heavily bombed by English bombers, his old patriotism is re-awakened and he determines to be of use to his country once again
The girl Marianne inherited a motorboat called “Eintracht” from her parents and struggled to get her to drive it with her uncle. There is a row with the new engineer Michel the evening after the first trip. He leaves - out of jealousy. Instead of him, Marianne takes three funny musicians with...
