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At the beginning of the 16th century, the Christian Martin Luther followed his calling and became an Augustinian monk in Erfurt. However, his life in the monastery confronted him with his fears of a judging God. These were finally taken away from him through the study of his religion, which emphasized a merciful Creator. As a theologian in Wittenberg, he then went public with his 95 theses, which criticized the church's practice of forgiving sins in exchange for money. A momentous dispute began.

In her last years, Louise is truly the Queen of Sorrows as she presides over a humiliating armistice with the French invaders.

The love affair between King Alfonso VIII of Castile and Rahel la Fermosa, a Jewish woman.

In the Bavaria of the 1980s, a father and his son compare their respective views on a family past heavy with resentment and unsaid.

Under the slogan of the arms race of the superpowers, which escalates in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and brings the world to the brink of nuclear war, two exemplary post-war male figures challenge an almost archaic feud: Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss and journalist Rudolf Augstein.

October 2018 was the four-hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War. The documentary traces the story of how it was finally brought to an end with the peace of Munster and Osnabruck – the first peace in European history to be concluded at the negotiating table and not fought on the battlefield.

This story of the miller Florian, who gave all his money to the war against Napoleon, is loosely based on a true story. After the war, Florian's reimbursement is challenged, and he must also pay taxes on his destroyed mill. He resists the tax collectors and takes off to Vienna, where he intends to defend his rights. On the way, he rescues the Duchess of Guastalla from assault. She also wants to go to Vienna, as His Majesty Franz II is trying to contest an heir in her favor. With cunning, luck, and dagger, Florian fights his way through a slew of nobility and their secret police.

Hinrich, the son of a feudal German landowner, falls in love with the beautiful daughter of one of his father's serfs despite opposition from both families. But when he actually offers marriage to her, this is going too far. The return of his brother Detlev, with an unscrupulous aristocratic bride of his own and a rival claim to their father's estates, proves to be the trigger for tragedy.

Part architectural genius, part kitsch fairytale, Neuschwanstein Castle is closely linked to the tragic fate of Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845-1886). The "Mad King" poured his heart and soul into this unique construction which looks back nostalgically to the Middle Ages. A focus on the history of a building filled with dreams and legends which has become an icon of Germany around the world.

In the 17th century, the Netherlands experienced an unprecedented artistic explosion: painters such as Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals were so prolific that they were able to make a living from their talent alone; so much so that, within a prosperous society, thanks to wealth from overseas colonies and financial speculation, collecting works of art became a status symbol.

After a harrowing escape from the front line, 15-year-old Hans Jokisch and his family return to their village in Silesia. But their beloved home is occupied - by the Schöppe family. They have no choice but to share the house from now on. Over time, the Jokisch house also becomes a home for the Schöppe family and Hans befriends the young Bruno Schöppe.

According to true events, the moving drama "The Children of Villa Emma" tells of a dangerous escape that took place during the Second World War. In 1942/1943, the Italian village of Nonantola was indeed a refuge for 73 Jewish children who wanted to escape the merciless access of the National Socialists on their way to the "Promised Land" of Palestine. Director Nikolaus Leytner describes the dangerous journey as an exciting test, presented by a talented young cast.

Before there were home video formats and the internet, the “Bahnhofskinos” (“Train station cinemas”) in West Germany regularly showed trash and erotica movies. Various filmmakers and especially contemporary witnesses recount in the documentary “Cinema Perverso – the wonderful and broken world of Bahnhofskino” their experiences and impressions.

An account of the life and work of Spanish actress Penélope Cruz: a long journey that began in the working-class neighborhoods of Madrid and ended in the hills of Hollywood.

They were, at best mocked or ridiculed, at worst incarcerated, tortured, or even beheaded. But they would not be deterred. For decades ten thousands of women in Germany, Great Britain, in France, the U.S. and many other countries fought for their right to vote. Some used the institutions, others turned into media savvy politicians, and still others turned to terrorism, went on hunger strike, or died as martyrs. 100 years later we tell a multi-perspective and emotional story of the international fight, against all odds, for women’s suffrage as an important step towards equal rights.

The story of the rise to power of King Frederick II (aka "Frederick the Great") of Prussia of his military campaigns to make Prussia a major power in Europe.

In the summer of 1959, as a magazine correspondent, writer and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-75) traveled along the Italian coast. In 1963, he documented the sexual behavior of the Italians. In the winter of 1970-71, he witnessed the hardships of the most impoverished Italian population suffering from the boot of state power. After these three trips, he came to the conclusion that Italian society had changed drastically for the worse over the years.

Biopic charting the career of legendary German footballer Franz Beckenbauer who won the World Cup as a player in 1974, and then as the West German team's coach in 1990. Taking place against the backdrop of the stunning global tournaments, the film depicts a man who railed against the rigid structures and outdated rules in football and fought to conduct his private life as he wished, outside of the moral constraints and expectations of the time.

Warsaw 1831: The young music student Frédéric Chopin falls in love with the singer Constantia. When his professor learns that Polish revolutionaries want to persuade Chopin to take part in their uprising, he and Constantia hatch a plan to keep Chopin away from the revolution: Constantia pretends that she no longer loves him, so that Chopin accepts an offer to go to a concert in Paris. There, however, he meets the famous writer George Sand and falls in love with her.

Autumn 1961: The GDR regime secures the border between the workers' and peasants' state and the class enemy in the West. To ensure this, the leadership also orders the use of firearms against those fleeing the republic. In Böseckendorf, close to the border, people are not prepared to accept this development. When one of the residents accidentally learns of a secret plan from the SED district leadership, which reveals that all unruly residents are to be forcibly relocated in just a few days, the people of Böseckendorf spontaneously decide to flee en masse. But can an entire village escape the GDR state power unnoticed overnight?

An Austrian prince hatches a plan to keep his rival, the Russian czar, busy by keeping him surrounded by beautiful women and away from the negotiating table. The Czar, however, has his own plan—he hires a man who is his exact double to impersonate him and confuse the Austrians by appearing to be everywhere at once. In addition, both the Czar and his double fall for the same woman.

Summer 1780: On the way to Salzburg Emanuel Schikaneder's theatre group gets held up in a small mountain village on the Austrian border due to a missing performance permit. In this village a dispute between mine owner Paccoli and the rebelling mine workers is escalating. The situation immediately inspires Schikaneder with the idea for a new play- but before long not only the mineworkers, but also Schikaneder's performers take to the picket line. This is because Schikaneder seems to care more about spending time with high society than his actors, who the Landlord refuses to feed until Schikaneder pays the outstanding bill. A hastily put together open air performance by the troupe leads to major disruption....

The documentary traces the extraordinary rise of expressionist artist Stephanie Hollenstein. From a farm girl from Lustenau to the most influential force in Viennese women's art, she rose to become president of the Association of Female Artists in Austria. She went to war disguised as a man and lived openly as a homosexual at a time when this was criminalized. Until then, it was a heroic story, until she joined the banned NSDAP in 1934, whose ideals she remained faithful to until her death in 1944. The documentary outlines Hollenstein's career against the backdrop of the political and economic conditions of her time, which show parallels to our present day.

Leni Riefenstahl's flamboyant Nazi aesthetics shaped the public image of the 1936 Olympics. Never before had sports and politics been mixed. Through archive photos and reconstructions, we get a closer look into the historical propaganda show.

On October 25, 1946, fifty years ago, the so-called Doctors' trial began in Nuremberg. Ernst Klee has compiled extensive material for this film about concentration camp doctors, for example, who nevertheless lectured at universities again after the war or found a place in the executive chairs of pharmaceutical companies. He documents the role of world-famous companies in human experimentation. He was also able to work through the investigation files against Josef Mengele in their entirety for the first time and view unknown material from Auschwitz.

During World War II, Switzerland severely limited refugees: "Our boat is full." A train from Germany halts briefly in an isolated corner of Switzerland. Six people jump off seeking asylum: four Jews, a French child, and a German soldier. They seek temporary refuge with a couple who run a village inn. They pose as a family: the deserter as husband, Judith as his wife, an old man from Vienna as her father, his granddaughter and the French lad, whom they beg to keep silent, as their children. Judith's teenage brother poses as a soldier. The fabrication unravels through chance and the local constable's exact investigation. Whom will the Swiss allow to stay? Who gets deported?

To historians, physicist Lise Meitner deserves to be placed on a par with Einstein, Heisenberg and Otto Hahn. In the 1930s on the verge of World War II, she led a small group of scientists who discovered that splitting the atomic nucleus of uranium releases enormous energy. This extraordinary film tells the story of a woman who was far ahead of her time as a scientist and a pioneer of feminism.

His opponents accused him of being homosexual. The male favorites he gathered around him during his short life gave those malevolent enemies solid arguments to do so. He would not have failed if he had proved himself to be an energetic king. But Edward II of England (1284-1327) never was a king like Edward I Longshanks, his father, or Edward III, his son, were. And his end is shrouded in myth and mystery.

At 7:14 am on 30 June 1908, the largest explosion recorded in human history to date reverberated throughout our planet. The force of the explosion was two thousand times that of the Hiroshima bomb. A woodland area the size of Luxembourg was eradicated in the Siberian taiga. This incident is recorded in history books as the Tunguska catastrophe. To this day, internationally renowned scientists of various disciplines argue about the causes of this disastrous explosion. The documentary discusses the latest and most controversial insights of these leading scientists. It identifies the reasons why Tunguska has evolved into a phenomenon and points out the curious results produced by this mythical event in culture and economy.

A dramatization of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.

After 30 years of conspiracy theories and myth making, this film uncovers the story of the CIA's most extensive clandestine operation in the history of modern warfare: The Secret War in Laos, which was conducted alongside the Vietnam War from 1964 -1973. While the world's attention was caught by the conflict in Vietnam, the CIA built the busiest military airport in the world in neighboring and neutral Laos and recruited humanitarian aid personnel, Special Forces agents and civilian pilots to undertake what would become the most effective operation of counterinsurgency warfare. As the conflict in Vietnam grew, the objective in Laos changed from a cost effective low-key involvement to save the country from becoming communist into an all-out air war to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail and bomb Laos back into the Stone Age that it had never really left in the first place. Conventional bombs equivalent to the destructive power of 20 Hiroshima-type weapons fell on Laos each year - 2 million tons

Over the past hundred years, dramatic social upheavals have taken place in the name of Karl Marx's theories. In Western Europe, the student movement of 1968 and the Eurocommunists were inspired. And in recent times, the thinker has experienced a renaissance.

At the end of the Cold War, something new arised that should influence an entire generation and express their attitude to life. It started with an idea in the underground subculture of Berlin shortly before the fall of the Wall. With the motto "Peace, Joy, Pancakes", Club DJ Dr. Motte and companions launched the first Love Parade. A procession registered as political demonstration with only 150 colorfully dressed people dancing to house and techno. What started out small developed over the years into the largest party on the planet with visitors from all over the world. In 1999, 1.5 million people took part. With the help of interviews with important organizers and contemporary witnesses, the documentary reflects the history of the Love Parade, but also illuminates the dark side of how commerce and money business increasingly destroyed the real spirit, long before the emigration to other cities and the Love Parade disaster of Duisburg in 2010, which caused an era to end in deep grief.

Tracing the past of her deceased grandfather who worked as a young doctor in the Red Cross hospital of HirSwiss-Japanese filmmaker Aya Domenig, the granddaughter of a doctor on duty during the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima, approaches the experience of her deceased grandfather by tracing the lives of a doctor and of former nurses who once shared the same experience. While gathering the memories and present views of these last survivors, the nuclear disaster in Fukushima strikes and history seems to repeat itself.oshima after the atomic bomb was dropped over the city, the filmmaker encounters doctors and nurses who went through similar experiences to his at the time. Right up until his death in 1991, her grandfather was never able to speak about his experiences, but the formidable stories and openness of her protagonists bring her closer to his past.

The story of GDR, an enthusiastic solidarity movement for the Black U.S. civil rights activist Angela Davis that emerged in East Germany in the early 1970s.

When rumors spread about a "child prodigy" among the Mozarts in Salzburg, the archbishop orders an investigation in which the seven-year-old Wolfgang has to demonstrate his talent before a committee of scholars. Soon afterwards, Leopold Mozart and his son are traveling all over Europe to play for patrons and admirers. The new Archbishop of Salzburg, Count Colloredo, is not very enthusiastic about Mozart and dismisses him. Mozart marries Constanze Weber, settles in Vienna and has his first successes, earning him commissions and the goodwill of Josef II. In the last years of his life, his situation worsens; Mozart runs into financial difficulties and health problems, but still works incessantly.

Berlin, 1943, during World War II. Martha Liebermann, an elderly upper-class Jewish woman, faces the decision of her life: should the widow of the world-famous and revered painter Max Liebermann continue to try to obtain an exit permit from the Nazis or, with the help of a resistance group, should she flee to Switzerland?

The Bokelberg photographic collection brings to life the Paris of the Belle Époque (1871-1914), an exhibition of workshops and stores with extremely beautiful shop windows before which the owners and their employees proudly pose, hiding behind their eyes the secret history of a great era.

An account of the reign of Herod the Great, king of Judea under the rule of the Roman Empire, remembered for having ordered, according to the Gospel of Matthew, the murder of all male infants born in Bethlehem at the time of the birth of Jesus, an unproven event that is not mentioned by Titus Flavius Josephus, the main historian of that period.

Between June 1940 and August 1944, Otto Abetz, German ambassador in Paris, and Fernand de Brinon, ambassador of the Vichy regime in Paris, met almost daily and developed official collaboration between the governments of Vichy and Nazi Germany.

In 2001, Jimmy Wales published the first article on Wikipedia, a collaborative effort that began with a promise: to democratize the spreading of knowledge, monopolized by the elites for centuries. But is Wikipedia really a utopia come true?

September 1st, 1939. Nazi Germany invades Poland. The campaign is fast, cruel and ruthless. In these circumstances, how is it that ordinary German soldiers suddenly became vicious killers, terrorizing the local population? Did everyone turn into something worse than wild animals? The true story of the first World War II offensive that marks in the history of infamy the beginning of a carnage and a historical tragedy.

In 1966, Marlon Brando (1924-2004), one of the greatest actors of all time, bought Tetiaroa Atoll, located in French Polynesia, with the purpose of creating a natural sanctuary dedicated to scientific research.

The name of car manufacturer Carl F. W. Borgward is still synonymous with the West German Wirtschaftswunder. For hundreds of thousands the "Isabella" from Borgward is the first car after the war while Borgward secures thousands of jobs in Bremen. But in 1961, the company of the passionate constructor goes surprisingly broke.

This insightful documentary feature from PJ Letofsky serves as a profile of iconic Austrian-American Architect Richard Neutra, whose work and legacy have helped shape the modern understanding of design, architecture and the interconnected fabric of nature. Today, Richard's legacy lives on through his son, Dion, who has taken up his father's mantle after nearly three-decades under his mentorship.

The history of the Teatro Amazonas in Manaus, an opera house located in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, whose construction, between 1884 and 1896, depended on the labor exploitation of the local indigenous populations, provides an insight into the cultural, social and political situation in Brazil.

In the motley final-year class 13e at Kepler School in Neukölln, children who have moved to the western part of the city legally as well as border crossers who live in East Berlin but commute to the West every day come together for lessons every day. After the school-leavers had completed their written exams in July 1961, they faced their oral exams after the summer vacation in September. But when the Berlin Wall was built in August, Berlin was divided and torn apart from one day to the next - including class 13e. The students from the eastern part of the city quickly have to make a difficult decision: should they attempt to cross the border or throw their dreams of the future to the wind?

Film adaptation of Werner Keller's bestselling non-fiction book, which attempts to show in a "less spectacular way than the original" that archaeological finds and findings do not contradict biblical statements.

40 years of Neues Theater Halle means 40 years of theater history and stories that have been lived and experienced. It began with the initiative of actor and director Peter Sodann, who, with the participation of his acting ensemble, built a theater in the center of Halle (Saale) that is unique in Germany. It continued through the peaceful revolution and the growth in audience numbers in the period after 1989/90, and ended with the end of his tenure as founding artistic director.

Their family name alone evokes horror: Himmler, Frank, Goering, Hoess. This film looks at the descendants of the most powerful figures in the Nazi regime: men and women who were left a legacy that indelibly associates them with one of the greatest abominations in history. What is it like to have grown up with a name that immediately raises images of genocide? How do they live with the weight of their ancestors' crimes? Is it possible to move on from the crimes of their ancestors?

Around 80 years ago, the gynecologist Carl Clauberg conducted medical experimentation on Jewish girls and women in Auschwitz. The results of those sadistic experiments were used in medicine across the globe. It is possible that German companies played a part in those experiments. Most of the survivors became infertile, and very few of them were later capable to give birth. The Untold Story of Block 10 introduces the audience to those who have survived.

Fictional film created by filmmaker Andreas Sulzer regarding the speculations of Nazi atomic bomb development. Primarily based around excavations of the Bergkristall bunker, known for manufacturing Messerschmitt Me 262 fighter aircraft.