MDR

A former East German boxing champion reduced to working as a bouncer and debt collector is forced to reflect on his life when he is diagnosed with a fatal disease.

The young actress Käthe is not 18 when she conquered Berlin's theater stages. Privately she finds her luck alongside the famous artist Max Kruse, but the wild marriage is considered scandalous and has a negative effect on the sale of his art. Thus, Käthe moves without him into an artists' colony on Monte Verità on Lake Maggiore. Out of necessity, she creates a doll that has never been seen before: with a natural expression and vivid facial expressions. What follows is a blitz career. But the phenomenal success of their handmade dolls causes unpleasant imitations - their company is about to go out.

A lighthearted look at the opening of the border crossing of Bornholmer Straße in Berlin from the point of view of the confused border guards.

You left your home to move far away. You were struck by a wind of change and were unfaithful to yourself. You reinvented yourself and you are now feeling free. But suddenly pressure arises in you.

Interwoven portraits of Anatoli Karpov and Garry Kasparov, whose 25-year bitter rivalry accompanied the fall of the USSR. The story of a duel between two chess giants, fighting a personal war in a world gone to ruin. This battle of black and white was more than a face-off over a chessboard. Part psychological drama, part political thriller, the film brings to life their hostilities, nested like Russian dolls. Karpov vs. Kasparov represents the battle between the faltering empire and the young liberals several steps ahead of the game, checkmating the old guard. Or how two stories – the societal one and the personal one – started out separately and ended up superimposed, twining together into one tale.

On December 23, 2013, former Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt will be 95 years old. As the second Social Democratic head of government in the Federal Republic of Germany, he shaped the country like few other chancellors. Even 30 years after the end of his time in government, he is still a highly esteemed expert whose advice and opinions are in demand. He is one of the most popular chancellors among the population and is held in the highest esteem by his party; even his political opponents at the time pay him the greatest respect.

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.

Looking for a forgotten city: off the coast of Egypt, just a few metres under the surface, but blanketed by sand and mud, slumbers the ancient port of Heracleion.

November 9, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall came down. A 10-year-old girl and her friends attempt to use their teleportation device to beam her uncle back to East Germany but instead, as they witness on TV, end up beaming everyone in their town into West Germany! They have to race against time to undo the experiment before the nasty border guards open fire...

Each year in June, Bavarian housewife Elke Richter visits family in Halle, in the GDR. There she meets family friend Gregor Pohl, a married carpenter, and they begin having an affair. After her family stops the annual visits due to the husband's promotion in the communist regime, the adulterous couple arranges to meet on other holidays. After Gorbachev's Glasnost leads to the fall of the Iron Curtain, everything changes, and Gregor chooses to emigrate to Canada.

Almost 15 years, the unequal sisters Mia and Susanne have not seen each other. But after her mother's death, Mia returns to her family. Problems are preprogrammed. But the fight for the family business and the memory of an old unfortunate pact connect the freedom-loving Mia and the family man Susanne.

Berlin, 1932. The Weimar Republic is torn apart in the struggle between right- and left-wing extremists and Berlin is a powder keg. Nightclub singer Henny Dalgow get to know the Social Democratic congressman and Jewish doctor Albert Goldman, and the two become a slightly odd couple. Albert is a sworn pacifist after his experiences in the First World War. Contrary to his beliefs he agrees to act as courier for his brother Edwin, who belongs to a radical communist cell.

15-year-old Elise is longing for a happy family life, but her mother Betty is weak and egocentric. She drowns her problems in alcohol. Everything seems to turn out good when they meet Ludwig. But he does not fall in love with Betty, he loves Elise.

A retrospective look at the youth cultures born in the German Democratic Republic. A celebration of the lust for life, a contemporary trip into the world of skate, a tale on three heroes and their boards, from their childhood in the seventies, through their teenage rebellion in the eighties and the summer of 1989, when their life changed forever, to 2011.