Discoveries from Germany World Cinema

A redefined love story in the footsteps of Schnitzler

Herman Melville's epic ocean adventure "Moby Dick" is an American masterpiece. But was this stirring tale of violence and revenge simply an allegory, or were there real giants of the deep deliberately attacking whaling ships? With the help of centuries old witness accounts and modern day science, we explain how the legend of the great white whale came to be. Then we determine if the multiple sperm whale assaults on ships in the 19th century were indeed premeditated and coordinated.

In 1921, in the Danish town of Egtved, on the Jutland peninsula, was discovered one of the most important Bronze Age burial sites: the tomb of a girl who lived around 1370 BCE. Who was that girl and what was her daily life like?

Lukas Schauttner is a management consultant. However, as a partner in his Berlin consulting company, he sees difficult times ahead. So he has to accept an assignment that takes him to Transylvania, where he is to inspect a factory. He doesn't actually want to go there, because since leaving the country in 1987, he has suppressed everything to do with his Romanian homeland. He wants to keep his trip short. But as soon as he arrives in the country, his past catches up with him. He meets his childhood sweetheart Mara and discovers a long and old family secret. When he is visited by his wife Doris and their daughter Nina, his stay becomes a heavy emotional and personal burden for Lukas. Suddenly he has to face up to his homeland, his past and his family.

In her documentary, director Sabine Michel revisits her own experiences during the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and Germany's subsequent reunification, as well as those of her four friends Claudi, Vera, Claudia and Veruscha. The five women were about 18 years old at that time, and belonged to the last school class in Dresden to graduate in the German Democratic Republic. The country and society school had prepared them for suddenly ceased to exist, thus they had to completely start anew. More than twenty years later, the five women travel to Paris together. During the train ride, they talk about their former dreams and aspirations, and how different their lives turned out to be.

Cowboys in Upper Franconia, a mysterious bookseller and a dead western rider. Inspector Peter Haller has returned to Bamberg after the death of his mother. Together with his colleague Sacher, he gets caught up in a web of erotic entanglements during his latest investigation...

Yalda, Solveigh and Lou have shared a close friendship since childhood. But when Solveigh suddenly takes her own life, Yalda and Lou are left with the lingering question: how could it come to this and which one of them is more suitable to take custody of Solveigh’s five-year-old daughter?

A hospital in a shabby provincial town in Tsar Russia swarming with spies, traitors and secret police. Doctor Ragin worries about his patient Gronow in Ward Six. Gronow is a former civil servant who talks about the future.

Young men from a car repair shop in Loch Ness, northern Scotland, use a sea monster imitation to rescue castle residents from murder attacks. This allows them the "real" Nessie - Monster into the enclosure. A simple-minded mixture of crime thriller, slapstick and action for simple demands.

An invitation to an old childhood friend's 40th birthday throws the Baumgartners' hitherto happy life into disarray and makes them question their previous concept of life. Marie and Markus Baumgartner are a picture-book couple. But everyday working life and two children make it hard for the couple to catch their breath. An invitation to the 40th birthday of Marie's former best friend from school, Heike, including a long weekend, comes at just the right time. Without further ado, the Baumgartners hire Grandpa Walter as a babysitter and travel to Marie's old Bavarian home. The surprise on the spot is huge: Heike has achieved everything the two friends had once dreamed of. The chubby duckling has become a beautiful swan and she is living her dream job as a photographer. She lives in a dream house by the lake with her smart husband Hans.

Matthias Müller's SLEEPY HAVEN is explicitly taking up the spirit of Kenneth Anger's FIREWORKS. SLEEPY HAVEN materializes fantasies of an erotic daydream; the film is a cocktail that merges Müller's own shots and found footage like a love act. Nude bodies of sailors are flaring up in flickering solarization effects; they are given an ardent aura of physical desire by this tattooing of the film emulsion. Müller only gradually changes his material metaphors to metaphors of love. But it is not only FIREWORKS the film is alluding to; there is yet another classic shimmering through Müller's imagery: Jean Genet's Un Chant d'Amour.

With provocative dresses and a lot of make-up, the 19-year-old Melanie defies her bleak hospital stay in Masserberg in Thuringia. For years, she suffers from a very serious eye disease that will lead to blindness without expensive therapy and expensive drugs. Mel dreams of freedom in the West and is convinced that they could be treated there as well. So you only the new doctor Carlo Sanchez remains as a worldly glimmer of hope. As their escape plans fly up and Carlo is to spy on behalf of the Stasi, begins for the unequal pair a race for life and death, love and freedom.

Story about a family that was set out on a lonely island.

The composer Kristian Wernher is supposed to transport uranium-containing rock samples from Brazil to Austria, specifically to Lake Wörthersee, for his father, the head of “Internationale Berg AG”. Everything is carried out in the strictest secrecy, but soon two agents are after Kristian. But that is not his biggest problem. An unpleasant surprise awaits Kristian at the delivery point.

Film shows the story of Papageno (the one from Mozart's opera "The Magic Flute"), who wants a mate, yet has difficulties getting one.

Speak Out, produced in 1971 by Radio Bremen with English actors, was the second English language course on German television after Walter und Connie (1963, with Anne Lawson and Brian McDermott). The episode shows real footage of the au pair of the Tanner family, a middle-class English family, learning how to make beds the English way. The characters speak British English at a slightly slower pace. In the three parts of the film, the student is familiarized with the English way of making beds and learns the relevant vocabulary. In the process, they progress from initial visual and auditory comprehension to repetition and finally to the independent use of sentences with the form 'have got to'.

Documentary about the first 20 years of the Rolling Stones with interviews and a lot of rare archive footages all over the world, pictures, TV and live songs 1962-1982 ("Satisfaction", "Jumpin' Jack Flash", "Time Is On My Side" and many more). Hosted by punk star Nina Hagen. Interviews of Mick Jagger, his brother Chris, his father Joe, Keith Richards, Bill Wyman, Ron Wood, Ian Stewart, Bianca Jagger, Paul McCartney, Marianne Faithfull, Rod Stewart, Wendy O'Williams (from the Plasmatics), Diana Ross and Bill Graham (manager).

The camera focuses on a white wall at which an eraser is repeatedly thrown in a rhythmic pattern. The ten-minute video work is a compilation of a total of 90 hours of video material, on which the artist worked continuously over a period of three months.

About a civilian who is press-ganged into a machine-gunner's squadron and transformed into the perfect soldier.

A film about four young women in Pyongyang who share a passion for football. The documentary follows their journey from national team players to retirement, highlighting their friendship and the impact of football on their lives.

The Swiss President, called by all only "big hangover", is in trouble: the election is coming and according to surveys his chances are not very good. From a meeting with the Spanish royal couple, he hopes media attention and a popularity boost. He does not suspect that his closest confidant Pfiff, of all people, is intriguing against him in order to come to power himself. But he does not even shy away from misusing his family for his own purposes. Soon, the president has to fight not only for his political position, but also for his marriage.

A masked killer is stalking and killing Londoners outside a nightclub.

'Manicurist Grete and nightclub waiter Carl share a bed, but not at the same time. They hate each other, even though they have never met. Their rented room is next to a cinema with its frankfurter-munching projectionist and romantic musical numbers that seem to permeate their lives. Might they meet and fall in love?' (BFI)

During a storm surge on the North Sea coast in 2007, farm worker Iven takes 3-year old Wienke, the daughter of dike warden Hauke Haien and his wife Elke, to Hamburg and leaves her outside a children’s home. Iven becomes a doorman in St. Pauli. 15 years later, he is visited by a young woman. She wants to know who she is and where she comes from. And she wants him to find her parents. Unwillingly, for he too has a past he would prefer to forget, Iven takes her to the village of Stegebüll on the coast. For the pair, a dramatic journey back in time begins to the fateful events in Stegebüll and the downfall of Hauke Haien and his family.

Hungarian Tango is an erotic movie that explores female desire and sexual pleasure through the lens of cultural heritage. It states that gender and nationality inform one's sexuality and that it is possible to liberate desire through conscious sexual practices. The film focus on one essential sexual act, highlighting the importance of it. It explores the fact that sex is more than just bodies coming together in pleasure, it is also personal evolution through experimentation.

A young unemployed man gets a job as a private secretary by chance. A good salary, a first-class apartment - but things are not going right in his new residence. Notes warn him, a beautiful woman appears in the mirror, valuable documents disappear from the tightly locked safe.

In a small town, the dancer Inge Maria Torselli is very popular with the theater audience. Her father is a ballet master and trained her. Lieutenant Count von Arenheim falls in love with her. But his childhood friend Harald von Bodenstein is also at her feet. The lieutenant asks the father for his daughter's hand in marriage and in order to be able to get married, he applies for his release from the military. His superiors and his mother have certain prejudices against the dancer for whom the lieutenant wants to sacrifice his career. Meanwhile, his old friend Harald tries to forget his grief that Inge didn't choose him. The lieutenant's mother sets the condition that the dancer gives up the stage forever. (Bundesarchiv)

Munich in the 1970s: A group of young people are killing time. Sylvie has broken up with her boyfriend, and a short time later he marries someone else. The slacker Rolf enters Sylvie's life and together they decide to form a circus group with their friends, mostly untalented petty crooks, and move to the provinces.

In Germany during World War II, a well-known psychic decides to collaborate with the Nazis.

This first film adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s play about class distinctions was made in 1955 in the Vienna Rosenhügel studios, but it was only premiered five years later. Curt Bois plays the rich capitalist Puntila who only becomes somewhat agreeable when he is drunk (which he is most of the time in this film). In his inebriated state, Puntila not only gets amorously involved with three different ladies but also suggests that his daughter Eva marries his chauffeur Matti. The chauffeur, however, doesn’t really agree…

The unemployed salesman Wolfgang practices optimism, his friend Günther realism: The situation is shitty! But then zookeeper Günther finds a few hundred thousand Euros from his demented neighbor. The mates take the money but also the care for the old man.

A very middle-class Bavarian family spend the last day of their Mediterranean vacation on the beach, day-dreaming and muttering racist remarks about Italian people.

In 1992, Olivier Messiaen's epic opera "Saint François d'Assise" was brought to the Salzburg Festival in a staging by Peter Sellars. The distinct visual appearance that Sellars lent to the opera, where video monitors with powerful images are used as a sort of high-tech metaphor for a cathedral's stained glass, drew critical acclaim and is still talked about as a watershed moment in opera to this day. This film here is a 75-minute documentary on the 1992 staging. Jean-Pierre Gorin filmed Sellars, baritone José van Dam (St. Francis) soprano Dawn Upshaw (The Angel), and the LA Philharmonic and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen as they rehearsed for the big day. There are interviews with these artists, though Sellars gets most of the screen time. The documentary is very much about Sellars' vision for Messiaen's theatrical drama. Very little is said about Messiaen's music.

One morning police storms into the house, where Karl lives with his mother to arrest the young man. Whatever the charge is, it seems to be something nobody has the slightest understanding for. Months before: Karl is working in a hospital. He is fascinated by a strong willed old lady, A friendship develops with this patient becoming more and more romantic. One night the two of them get closer, closer than allowed.

Christoph Eichhorn plays multiple roles in this old fashioned story of a chorus girl who gets her big break.

The famous-notorious Division Brandenburg was (in wartime) under command of Admiral Canaris. But, the death brave division, joined by men, who where not really quite volunteering, received a command: Sulina, a harbour at black sea, where urgently needed oil is turner over, should be prevented from an attack. The plan is worked out and some more men need to volunteer, to let it become real.

Europe on the verge of social and economic change. A close up into the shaken vision of four couples, daily struggles, fights, kids, sex and passion. A movie about the politics of love. Le cinéma politique fait l'amour.

A coming of age story of people who are already adults. Torn between emotional dependency and physical attraction, Adam grows desperate between what his long-term relationship with Anna and the temptations his childhood pal Conrad offer, living a bachelor’s life indulging in occasional jobs, parties and one night stands. Adam progressively fails in disentangling the turmoil of jealousy and attachment.

The film is an adaptation of the 1891 operetta Der Vogelhändler by composer Carl Zeller, with libretto by Moritz West and Ludwig Held, though it incorporates few of the original songs, using them mostly instrumentally or in the background. The plot follows Adam, a Tyrolean bird seller in 18th-century Rhineland, who hopes to marry his beloved Christl, a postmaster's daughter; to secure his future, she arranges for him to perform at court, but complications arise when she is mistakenly suspected of an affair with a philandering prince.

Eduard and Charlotte live an isolated and idyllic life together. But soon Eduard feels that something is missing and he invites his friend Otto to come stay. Charlotte, meanwhile, decides that her foster daughter Ottilie should come live with them. Complex and passionate relationships between the four people begin. Based on Goethe's novel of the same title.

Bob, a sympathetic young man, keeps telling women what they want to hear to have a good time. Just as he is about to marry the daughter of a very wealthy banker, her father does a little research on his future son-in-law and finds out the truth about Bob. He forces Bob to marry his daughter and behave like the perfect husband, or else... Unfortunately, Bob meets "The One" just a few days before the wedding and had also told her what she wanted to hear, all of this unbeknownst to his future wife. Then right as he's trying to extricate himself from those dilemmas, two very protective Turkish brothers of one of his past affairs are after him to take revenge for taking her virginity!

With the help of his assistant Anja, Ottocaro Weiss intends to put the plague on stage: circumstances beyond his control and a lack of fresh talent have forced him to close down his flea circus. For Weiss, the plague means the «extinction of everything that makes life miserable and low and freedom along with it. Unbeknownst to him, he has won the support of a patron who is of the exact opposite opinion: for Johannes Wagner, the plague is an organising principle, and, aided by his agent Moosbrugger, he is able to smuggle a new number onto the programme. Whereas Ottocaro Weiss means to represent the plague theatrically, what appears on stage is the scientific reality of the rat-borne infestation.

Hubert and Staller find the first body in the forest, the second practically falls into their laps. The trail leads to a retirement home, of all places. The old men finance their retirement by growing cannabis, and they have also been blackmailed, but that doesn't make them murderers. Or does it? Meanwhile, precinct manager Girwidz is hoping for a promotion: his old boss has announced his arrival. However, the police director is in Upper Bavaria for a completely different reason.

Leonie goes to her grandmother's house with her parents and her little brother Simon. Simon wants her to read Little Red Riding Hood to him. The family's car suddenly breaks down. While her mother and brother try in vain to light a fire, Leonie goes to the entrance of a cave. She ventures inside. At the exit of the cave, a fairy tale land opens up.

A young Berlin couple travel to a friend's place for the celebration of Silvester and New Year's Eve. During that period, we witness today's juvenile sub-culture, especially the ways of keeping a partnership - or breaking it up in between.

On the way from Mexico City to Caracas, a plane crash-lands on an uninhabited island. The criminal Mario Bertelli terrorizes the other survivors. He prevents them from sending emergency signals.

Based on a true story, Miguel Alexandre's two-part drama focuses on an East German woman and the fight for her children. Spring 1982: Sara Bender, living with her daughters Silvia and Sabine in the East German town of Erfurt, wants to marry her colleague Peter, but shortly before the wedding, her father is killed in a road accident. As the funeral takes place in West Germany, she isn't allowed to got there, so she starts planning to leave her communist home country forever. Trying to flee via Romania, she is caught by the secret service. After years in jail, Sara is ransomed by the West German government, but without her daughters. To draw the world's attention on her desperate situation, she starts demonstrating at the Berlin border crossing Checkpoint Charlie

In DIARY OF A BEE we follow the adventurous journey of a single bee from its birth (or hatching) to the founding of a new colony. Three years of shooting with the latest macro camera technology and special post-processing enable a unique visual language that allows completely new insights into the world of bees - without becoming unscientific. This story is told by Anna Thalbach as the "winter bee" and her daughter Nellie Thalbach, who takes on the role of the "summer bee". Welcome to the big drama of the little pollen collectors!