Johannes, a doctor of physics, travels with his doctoral supervisor to a scientific congress in the Alps. A series of mysterious incidents occur on site. He meets Karin, a mysterious jazz pianist who seems to know more about him than she can know. Suddenly, mysterious deaths begin to pile up and...
Michaela, an epileptic, enrolls in college to study education. She goes off her medication and soon begins hearing voices and seeing apparitions that tell her to avoid religious objects, although she is devoutly Roman Catholic. One priest scoffs at the idea that Michaela could be possessed by...
German-Jewish cabaret singer Nelly survived Auschwitz but had to undergo reconstructive surgery as her face was disfigured. Without recognizing Nelly, her former husband Johnny asks her to help him claim his wife’s inheritance. To see if he betrayed her, she agrees, becoming her own doppelganger.
Berlin in June of 1940. While Nazi propaganda celebrates the regime’s victory over France, a kitchen-cum-living room in Prenzlauer Berg is filled with grief. Anna and Otto Quangel’s son has been killed at the front. This working class couple had long believed in the ‘Führer’ and followed...
In the early 60s, Bernward Vesper and fellow university student Gudrun Ensslin begin a passionate love in the stifling atmosphere of provincial West Germany. Dedicated to the power of the written word, Bernward and Gudrun found a publishing house whose first publication is, paradoxically to many, a...
Axel lives in a poor village where people work days at the chicken farm and gamble their last pennies at night. It's made Manne, the farm and casino owner, a very powerful man. Axel's debts are so great he has to do whatever Manne says. So he works in Manne's villa but can at least see his...
In rural Westphalia, Franz Berger struggles to keep his inn open. On this day, a bluff, overbearing bully, Hermann Walzer, has booked the dining room for a wedding banquet for his son Mark. There's bad blood between Berger and Walzer, so when the first course, shrimp cocktail, is off, Hermann...
Marriage swindler Herbert Krugschenk is a master of his trade. His success is based on meticulous planning, and his wife "Schnuck" is responsible for this. Herbert's life is promptly turned upside down when she dumps him one day. At least the way is now clear for the big coup that his wife has...
East Germany, in autumn 1999. Gudrun Pfaff is about to turn sixty when she finds out that the orphanage she grew up in is being sold to turn into a hotel, and she is willing to do anything to stop it.
The Pope is in town and the night of his stay is anything but heavenly for some of Berlin′s inhabitants. Rich and poor, down-and-outs and policemen, street kids and taxi drivers - in their search for a little bit of happiness, they all end up on an amusing and at times harrowing odyssey through...
Twelve-year-old Karla testifies in court. She makes serious accusations against her own father, who should have guaranteed her safety. Judge Lamy supports her in this difficult trial and becomes her most important confidant.
Two amateur circus kids from a poor Ukrainian village, ten-year-old Barbu and his older sister Mimma, are sold to a circus artist called Caruso who promises them a career in the West.
1947: the Russians have uranium extracted from the newly founded SAG Wismut mine in the Ore Mountains. Among the miners is Kurt, who has become an enthusiastic communist while a prisoner of war in Russia and therefore hates his father, a convinced Nazi. Kurt falls in love with Lydia. The daughter...
Ulf, Eva and Renate, all in their seventies, are partying hard during a camping trip in Poland. The next day, Ulf, confused and distraught, is found by hunters at the edge of the forest. He believes he has killed someone.
Matthias, son of popular rural Lutheran pastor Oskar Brendel and his wife Karin, about to graduate without honors unlike his emigrated big brother, is a pubertal rebel and hopelessly in love with local Maren Grothe. After he picks a fight at the village fair with her flirt and storms off, Maren s...
Three young Russian friends, who move from Moscow to Berlin in a lucky wave of emigration right after the fall of the Berlin wall. They take their chance looking for a better life and find themselves involved in the tales of everyday lunacy on the streets of Berlin and its spirit of the early...
