Social & External
The people behind it
Hana Zaoralová
Baroness Ilona von Szentivanyi
Jürgen Reuter
Dr. Birnbaub
Klaus-Dieter Klebsch
Von Sanden
Dirk Wäger
Fehlbosch
Horst Hiemer
Dresde
Hans-Peter Reinecke
In this film essay, critic Peter Buchka explores the German cinema of the 1920s, ranging from the disquieting images of Fritz Lang's Metropolis to the castrating sexuality of Marlene Dietrich in Die Blaue Engel. The program provides an introduction to Weimar cinema, with Buchka's essay narrated over the images from film clips of 1920s era German films.
Film journalist and critic Rüdiger Suchsland examines German cinema from 1919, when the Republic of Weimar is born, to 1933, when the Nazis come into power. (Followed by Hitler's Hollywood, 2017.)
Berlin, 1930, during the rise of Nazism. Hermann Hermann, a Russian emigrant and chocolate manufacturer, married to the capricious Lydia, loses his temper more and more every day when dealing with his workers and other businessmen; until he meets Felix, a vagrant, who seems to be physically identical to him; a disconcerting fact that leads Hermann Hermann to plot a particular way out of a fake world he actually hates.
The intricate history of UFA, a film production company founded in 1917 that has survived the Weimar Republic, the Nazi regime, the Adenauer era and the many and tumultuous events of contemporary Germany, and has always been the epicenter of the German film industry.
A keen chronicle of the unlikely rise to power of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) and a dissection of the Third Reich (1933-1945), but also an analysis of mass psychology and how the desperate crowd can be deceived and shepherded to the slaughterhouse.
Presents a unique and disturbing look at the rise of the Nazi party. The documentary, directed by Lutz Becker, attempts to remain as objective as possible, serving as a neutral observer of the years 1918 through 1933 in Germany. Via newsreel footage and clips of features from the era, the film offers a kaleidoscopic view of the many elements that fueled the rise of the Socialist Nationalist Party, including post-WWI poverty. Hitler occupies a central place in the documentary.
How Germany was when its people entered the nightmare of World War II? Despair and fear lead a hungry population to follow the chilling call of just one man to world domination. A real-life horror story, an ominous tale of violence and deception, which takes place from 1919 to 1934. (Entirely made up of restored, colorized archival footage.)
On February 26, 1920, Robert Wiene's world-famous film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari premiered at the Marmorhaus in Berlin. To this day, it is considered a manifesto of German expressionism; a legend of cinema and a key work to understand the nature of the Weimar Republic and the constant political turmoil in which a divided society lived after the end of the First World War.
Kuhle Wampe takes place in early-1930s Berlin. The film begins with a montage of newspaper headlines describing steadily-rising unemployment figures. This is followed by scenes of a young man looking for work in the city and the family discussing the unpaid back rent. The young man, brother of the protagonist Anni, removes his wristwatch and throws himself from a window out of despair. Shortly thereafter his family is evicted from their apartment. Now homeless, the family moves into a garden colony of sorts with the name “Kuhle Wampe.”
Germany in the Thirties. A movie teller realizes that his profession is not longer needed. Silent movies are not produced any longer. Telling stories is the only thing the man was ever good in, so he does not know what to do now. As political circumstances are changing dramatically these days in Germany, he gets new hope that things will again be going better for him...
"Weimar" was the first democracy on German soil. It was a new beginning full of emotion and hope - in difficult times. Weimar is often viewed from the end, from its downfall under National Socialism. Yet it was a great new beginning. The Germans dared to embrace democracy. A documentary as a lively discussion about Weimar. What can Weimar teach us today?
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.
During a nighttime ride, a taxi driver tells a passenger strange stories that occurred in different neighborhoods and decades of the city, transforming the young woman's perspectives and beliefs about the region.
When Hannah's parents took her to a new school, they said it was to give her a new start. However, Hannah is 11, autistic, and due to her condition, unable to speak. She had a twin called Angel, but when Angel died, Hannah was forbidden to grieve by her abusive parents and punished when she sought comfort from her sister's things. Now Hannah lives locked inside a silent life of despair, which she fears will soon end at the hands of her parents. However, when a knife keeps appearing under her pillow, and a voice that she thinks is inside her head won't leave her alone, Hannah begins to realise that just maybe, she may have an ally not of this world, but fear paralyses her. Could it be Angel, who from the 'other side' has come to seek justice for all the abuse she has suffered? Can Hannah overcome her fear enough to let her in?
A dramatization of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem 'The Courtship of Miles Standish,' this is the story of the Pilgrims who fled religious persecution in England and came to America aboard the Mayflower.
A truck driver has been forced to smuggle illicit cargo to save her brother from a deadly prison gang. With FBI operatives hot on her trail, Sally's conscience is challenged when the final package turns out to be a teenage girl.
A group of friends start playing a board game towards the end of summer. Things start looking deadly though when they start dying off and they have to figure out how they’re being killed and who among them is committing murder.
James Wynn wants to ask his deceased father questions about the Family Business. He invents a device that gives him the ability to go back in time to 1985. However, when he arrives, there's a problem.
Fr. Hugh O'Flaherty is a Vatican official in 1943-45 who has been hiding downed pilots, escaped prisoners of war, and Italian resistance families. His activities become so large that the Nazis decide to assassinate him the next time he leaves the Vatican.
Eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner lives his last 25 years with gusto and secretly becomes involved with a seaside landlady, while his faithful housekeeper bears an unrequited love for him.
People in a small German village in the last valley to remain untouched by the devastating Thirty Years' War try to exist in peace with a group of soldiers occupying the valley.
It's the final weeks of the most consequential presidential election in history. America is poised to elect either its first female president or its first viable independent candidate. Reporting history as it's made, an idealistic young journalist teams up with her idol, legendary journalist Nick Booker, to uncover a conspiracy that places the fate of the election, and the country, in their hands.
Richard Jewell thinks quick, works fast, and saves hundreds, perhaps thousands, of lives after a domestic terrorist plants several pipe bombs and they explode during a concert, only to be falsely suspected of the crime by sloppy FBI work and sensational media coverage.
After two British Secret Intelligence Service agents are murdered at the hands of a cryptic neo-Nazi group known as Phoenix, the suave agent Quiller is sent to Berlin to investigate.
Cold War spy Greville Wynne and his Russian source try to put an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
A miraculous conception. A merciless king. A murderous pursuit. Mary's journey to give birth to Jesus unfolds in this biblical coming-of-age epic.
The story of Vera Atkins, a crafty spy recruiter, and two of the first women she selects for Churchill's "secret army": Virginia Hall, a daring American undaunted by a disability and Noor Inayat Khan, a pacifist. These civilian women form an unlikely sisterhood while entangled in dangerous missions to turn the tide of the war.
An adrenaline seeking snowboarder gets lost in a massive winter storm in the back country of the High Sierras where he is pushed to the limits of human endurance and forced to battle his own personal demons as he fights for survival....
A misguided museum guard who loses his job and then tries to get it back at gunpoint is thrown into the fierce world of ratings-driven TV gone mad.
A journalist gets caught up in a terrorist plot in Moscow while investigating the Russian secret service.
A group of top female agents from American, British, Chinese, Colombian, and German government agencies are drawn together to try and stop an organization from acquiring a deadly weapon to send the world into chaos.
A woman recovering from a nervous breakdown tries to convince her husband and and the local London police that she has witnessed a murder in the abandoned house next door.
A 9th century woman of English extraction born in the German city of Ingelheim disguises herself as a man and rises through the Vatican ranks.
The true story of British intelligence whistleblower Katharine Gun who—prior to the 2003 Iraq invasion—leaked a top-secret NSA memo exposing a joint US-UK illegal spying operation against members of the UN Security Council. The memo proposed blackmailing member states into voting for war.
When things go bad in Beantown, top assassin Killer Bean is called to clean-up the mess. Detective Cromwell finds himself in the middle between Killer Bean and mob boss Cappuccino.
Blacklisted in modern day WW2, a Swedish oil trader opts to assist British Allies, by means of infiltrating and surveying Nazi Germany.
CIA employee Edward Snowden leaks thousands of classified documents to the press.
Federal agent Alexandra Barnes believes that Catherine Petersen is a serial killer who marries rich men and then murders them for their money. But since Catherine is seemingly a master of disguise and has multiple identities, Alexandra can't prove anything with conventional detective work. With no other option, she goes undercover, pursuing the same man as Catherine, and hoping that Catherine will slip up and reveal her true identity.
