Peter Kern

Das Totenreich

Karin Brandauer

Vadim Glowna, Irm Hermann

Denmark, by the end of the 19th century. Gov. Dihmer gives his resignation because of his illness. Two friends, a pastor and a physician, try to awaken his willpower and transcend a journey to Italy. Meanwhile, in the homeland, there are political breakthroughs that make little hope for new times.

Welt am Draht

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Klaus Löwitsch, Barbara Valentin

Институт кибернетики создал революционный суперкомпьютер — Симулакрон, с помощью которого можно моделировать целые миры и населять их искусственными людьми. Изначально Симулакрон должен был использоваться в благих общественных целях, но глава Института Сискинс начинает осуществлять свои корыстные планы. Помешать Сискинсу, а также разгадать ряд тайн и загадок вокруг суперкомпьютера должен гений компьютерных технологии Фред Штиллер…

Himmel, Polt und Hölle

Julian Pölsler

Erwin Steinhauer, Monica Bleibtreu

Daniel Schmid - Le chat qui pense

Pascal Hofmann, Benny Jaberg

Daniel Schmid, Ingrid Caven

When director Daniel Schmid grew up, his parents ran a hotel in the Alps, and this singular setting was to influence his film. Rather by coincidence he came to Berlin in the early 1960s and became part of the new German wave. Schmid worked with, among others, Wenders and Fassbinder, for example as an actor in Wender’s The American Friend. He met Ingrid Caven, who was to play a diva in several of his films. This is a documentation of a part of modern European film history and a good analysis of artistry and how it corresponds to the individual behind the camera. A wealth of archival footage brings us close to many directors and actors in Schmid’s circle. If you’ve never seen a Daniel Schmid film, you are sure to want to after watching this portrait of his life.

Die Geisel

Peter Zadek

Heinrich Giskes, Herbert Grönemeyer

Fox and His Friends

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Peter Chatel

Fox, a former circus performer, wins the lottery of DM 500,000 and can now have the life and things that he has always wanted. While he wants to climb up the social ladder, it isn't without turmoil, and being torn between his old working class roots, and the shiny new facade of middle class consciousness.

Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Brigitte Mira, Ingrid Caven

After a worker kills a superior and commits suicide, each of his family members attempts to forge a path forward in life.

Hitler: A Film from Germany

Hans-Jürgen Syberberg

Harry Baer, Heinz Schubert

This inventive, exhaustive seven-hour film looks at the rise, reign and demise of Adolf Hitler. German director Hans Jürgen Syberberg, who was a child during World War II, doesn't try to recreate history to the letter. Instead, he places his actors -- many of whom play several roles -- on a stage and has them reenact events based on and inspired by Hitler's life. The action combines traditional narration and historical characters, but also idiosyncratic tweaks, like the use of puppets.

Crazy Boys-Eine Handvoll Vergnügen

Peter Kern

Udo Schenk, Marianne Sägebrecht

A decadent Cabaret in Hamburg (Germany) is near closing down. The owner decides to make a last effort to save the place: produce a male striptease show. Many candidates answer to his newspaper ad. No matter how weird were the rehearsals, the owner would have no regrets.

Die toten Körper der Lebenden

Peter Kern

Andreas Bieber, Oliver Rosskopf

Two men break out of prison and go on a killing spree.

Die Wildente

Hans W. Geißendörfer

Bruno Ganz, Peter Kern

Consul Werle holds a reception in honour of the homecoming of his son Gregers. At the reception, Gregers meets his childhood friend, Hjalmar Ekdal, who is married to Gina, a former maid of the Werle family. Hjalmar is unaware that Werle had an affair with Gina and that their 14-year-old daughter Hedwig is not his child. Gregers moves in with the Ekdals with the intention of allowing unsuspecting Hjalmar and his family to share in the "happiness of truth". Hedwig is entirely devoted to a wild duck, which lives on a pond outside their house. When Hjalmar learns the truth about his daughter, he wants to leave his family. Gregers advises Hedwig to kill the wild duck so that her father, impressed by this sacrifice, will return home. On the following day, Hedwig's birthday, she doesn't shoot the duck, but shoots herself instead.

Schlingensief – In das Schweigen hineinschreien

Bettina Böhler

Christoph Schlingensief, Tilda Swinton

Using unpublished and newly digitalised archive footage and film material, Bettina Böhler has brilliantly assembled this film about the life and work of the exceptional artist Christoph Schlingensief, who died in 2010.

Mondo Lux - Die Bilderwelten des Werner Schroeter

Elfi Mikesch

Werner Schroeter, Rosa von Praunheim

Werner Schroeter was one of the most significant proponents of New German Cinema. Schroeter was diagnosed with cancer in 2006. In her film, Elfi Mikesch, who photographed a number of Schroeter’s films and who collaborated closely with him to create his vision, provides us with an intimate insight into Schroeter’s artistic output during the remaining four years of his life.

Ludwig: Requiem for a Virgin King

Hans-Jürgen Syberberg

Harry Baer, Ingrid Caven

Reflected in an artificial and bombastically staged illusory world with Wagnerian compositions, glossy and satirical time references, 19th century German figures and traditions are stripped of their mythology and interpreted by the Germany of 1972.

Karl May

Hans-Jürgen Syberberg

Helmut Käutner, Kristina Söderbaum

This ethereal, three-hour biopic is the middle film in Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s “German Trilogy” on the mythological foundations of the Third Reich. By fusing theater, music, and cinema, Syberberg conjures up Karl May (1842-1912), the immensely popular German author, who set many of his adventure novels in an idealized version of the American Wild West. His tales of the cowboy and the Ubermensch alike were beloved by many, including (Our) Hitler, who supposedly ordered his generals to read May works after defeats in the Russian campaign.

Hamlet: This Is Your Family

Peter Kern

Christoph Schlingensief, Bibiana Beglau

A provocative and ironic pamphleteering documentary about the making of Christoph Schlingensief’s Nazi-'Hamlet’ (2001). Both a media event and a form of political action Schlingensief let ex-neo-Nazis play themselves. His provocation in so-called Nazi-free Switzerland was not appreciated and when he added fuel to the flames by calling for the local political party SVP to be banned, his media offensive made front-page news far beyond Switzerland.