Starring Betty Amann in her most famous leading role, Joe May's Asphalt is a luxuriously produced German Expressionist classic where tragic liaisons and fatal encounters are shaped alongside the constant roar of Berlin traffic.
Social & External
The people behind it
Albert Steinrück
Hauptwachtmeister Holk
Else Heller
Mutter Holk
Gustav Fröhlich
Wachtmeister Albert Holk
Betty Amann
Else Kramer
Hans Adalbert Schlettow
Konsul Langen
Hans Albers
Erster Dieb
Rosa Valetti
Geschäftsführerin
Paul Hörbiger
Zweiter Dieb
Arthur Duarte
Trude Lieske
Winsor McCay recreates the sinking of the ocean liner Lusitania by a German U-boat in this propaganda piece designed to stir up anti-German sentiment during World War I.
Mitsuo the Counselor's son marries writer Miyoko, however a tender romance blossoms between Miyoko and Mitsuo's sister Kaoru. When the family falls to bankruptcy, heartache ensues; Miyoko's illness worsens and she is sent to a sanatorium, separating the lovers. Based on a story from Tales of Flowers by Nobuko Yoshiya
Sir Thomas Bedford orchestrates the heist of a Spanish casino, with the aid of a singer performing there. The police are aware of their activities, and a hostage situation arises.
While building an irrigation system for a Southwestern desert community, an engineer vies with a local cowboy for the affections of a rancher's daughter.
Two wanderers, a young man and a young woman, meet in the desert and decide to travel on together. The two travellers walk and hitch-hike their way down the road to their destination, the beach, becoming friends and lovers.
A walk in a wheat farmland in the a village. While moving between the tall sheaves, the walker’s restless eye surveys the fields, the cattle, and settles on the faces of the residents of the small town. Brief animation exercises repeat, and the sketch the figure of a contemplative walker.
14,000-year-old "Man from Earth" John Oldman, now teaching in northern California, realizes that not only is he finally starting to age, but four students have discovered his deepest secret, putting his life in grave danger and potentially destroying the world's most popular religion.
What seemed like a naive adventure of love becomes a tragedy, since our protagonist Javier, being seduced by young friends of his uncle, discover a hidden plot: "The Oedipus complex". This trauma leads Javier to cause an accident in which his mother's lover dies and unfortunately herself. But the tragedy will continue.
Hans is thirty, a Kreuzberg resident, a bike messenger, an ex-boyfriend, a son. “Luftleerer Raum” chronicles a typical day in his life. He works, hangs out with friends. But in reality, he’s trying to escape a sad truth by hiding behind the illusion of everyday life.
A chronicle of the life of Jaro, the leader of a juvenile delinquent gang, depicting his rise from street urchin to outlaw anti-hero on the way to his inevitable end.
An abused young woman finds safety and love in the arms of a famous novelist.
A government ministry's fast-rising head of security asks a shadowy fixer, Meursault, to steal a bag from an armored truck. Meursault goes to Théo, a former night club owner, in prison for two years on false charges, who's being released in exchange for information about Montreal's underworld. Théo agrees to steal the bag for money and safe passage to the US for himself and his son Robin. Théo brings in two helpers, Gilder, ex-con and set designer, and Roxanne, Gilder's friend, a tough-minded petty thief. Their elaborate plan blows up when a guard, Marcel, takes his responsibilities too seriously. What happens to father and son? Will any of the thieves escape?
Stuck in a sexless marriage, a frustrated well-to-do couple agrees to see a female sex therapist. Unfortunately, she only helps escalate the tensions between them. Meanwhile, the police are baffled by a string of brutal nightly killings.
Genial Irish NYC policeman Tom O'Hara is looking forward to the arrival of his wife and their young son, Shandy from Ireland. Several days before the ship is to dock, O'Hara gets a radiogram informing him that his wife has died at sea. That night a burglar breaks into the Antigue & Second Hand Shop ran by Sol Bloom, directly below O'Hara's flat. The burglar shoots O'Hara, who has rushed to his friend's aid, and, with his last breath he asks Sol to take care of Shandy. When Shandy arrives, Sol immediately makes him a member of the family, which also consists of a very mischievous motherless boy named Joey Bloom, whose pursuits consist of stealing oranges from fruit-dealer Tony, and playing hookey from school. Tom Varney, the young beat cop, is in love with Ruth Sneider, whose mother runs a Cleaning and Dyeling establishment. Ruth, however, is momentarily dazed with worthless Dave Haller.
A chemist named Aratus invents a concoction that will turn creatures to stone, but only realizes the dangers of his creation when his wife falls victim to it.
Dissipated youth Tommy Hilgrade is sent to the lumber lands in the Northwest by his father who hopes that hard living will reform his son. Accompanying Tommy is his sister Marion. Upon their arrival in Canada, lumber foreman Jack Macy is attracted to Marion but, unknown to her, he contributes to Tommy's addiction to drink and gambling. When Marion falls in love with French Canadian Jules Bonnivet after he rescues her from a fall through the ice, Macy schemes to destroy their romance by fabricating the story that Jules is responsible for Tommy's downfall.
A Jewish parvenu climbs the social ladder by seducing wealthy women.
A count falls in love with a dead ringer of a deceased loved one.
In 2015, thirty year old refugee Francis, the sole survivor of a boat that illegally crossed the Mediterranean, is drawn into Berlin's seedy underbelly.
In 1984 East Berlin, dedicated Stasi officer Gerd Wiesler begins spying on a famous playwright and his actress-lover Christa-Maria. Wiesler becomes unexpectedly sympathetic to the couple, and faces conflicting loyalties when his superior takes a liking to Christa-Maria.
Germany in the autumn of 1957: Lola, a seductive cabaret singer-prostitute exults in her power as a temptress of men, but she wants out—she wants money, property, and love. Pitting a corrupt building contractor against the new straight-arrow building commissioner, Lola launches an outrageous plan to elevate herself in a world where everything, and everyone, is for sale. Shot in childlike candy colors, Fassbinder’s homage to Josef von Sternberg’s classic The Blue Angel stands as a satiric tribute to capitalism.
A teen girl in 1970s Berlin becomes addicted to heroin. Everything in her life slowly begins to distort and disappear as she befriends a small crew of junkies and falls in love with a drug-abusing male prostitute.
In post-war Europe, a diverse group of passengers aboard a U.S. Army train to bombed-out Frankfurt becomes involved in a Nazi assassination plot.
In this classic German thriller, Hans Beckert, a serial killer who preys on children, becomes the focus of a massive Berlin police manhunt. Beckert's heinous crimes are so repellant and disruptive to city life that he is even targeted by others in the seedy underworld network. With both cops and criminals in pursuit, the murderer soon realizes that people are on his trail, sending him into a tense, panicked attempt to escape justice.
A police detective falls for the bank robber's girlfriend he is supposed to be tailing.
Former East Germany, 1992. Patrick Stein and Markus Bach, two very different police officers, are commissioned to investigate the disappearance of two female teenagers in a remote area of the country. Did they run away from home or did something more terrible happen to them?
A woman tries to survive the invasion of Berlin by the Soviet troops during the last days of World War II.
In a small Northern German town, a dishonourably discharged Afghanistan veteran is offered a job as a deliveryman by an alcoholic Turkish entrepreneur, through which the former meets the latter's gorgeous wife.
At the end of World War II, a German soldier is looking for his daughter while an SS troop is looking for a Jewish treasure.
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.
Tom Ripley, an American who deals in forged art, is slighted at an auction in Hamburg by picture framer Jonathan Zimmerman. When Ripley is asked by gangster Raoul Minot to kill a rival, he suggests Zimmerman, and the two, exploiting Zimmerman's terminal illness, coerce him into being a hitman.
In the aftermath of WWII, German-Jewish cabaret singer Nelly has to undergo facial reconstructive surgery following her survival from Auschwitz. Without recognising Nelly, her former husband Johnny asks her to help him claim his wife’s inheritance. To see if he's betrayed her, she agrees, becoming her own doppelgänger.
Maria Altmann, an octogenarian Jewish refugee, takes on the government to recover artwork she believes rightfully belongs to her family.
A female executive and a night janitor conspire to commit a daring diamond heist from their mutual employer, The London Diamond Corporation.
After a string of abusive relationships, Wanda abandons her family and seeks solace in the company of a petty criminal.
When Erin Bell was a young cop, she was given an undercover assignment that ended badly and destroyed her life. Years later, she must face her demons in order to make peace with her past.
A doctor in early 19th-century Germany becomes infatuated with the sister of a man he unintentionally killed and bargains with the Devil incarnate to conjure their union in exchange for his soul.
A motorcycle stunt rider considers committing a crime in order to provide for his wife and child, an act that puts him on a collision course with a cop-turned-politician.