Maria (Corinna Harfouch), a rising theater star in Nazi Germany, is in love with Mark (André Hennicke), a Jewish actor.
Two 17-year-olds, Werner Holt and Gilbert Wolzow, are pulled out of school and into Hitler's army. Gilbert becomes a fanatical soldier; but at the front, Werner begins to understand the senselessness of war. When Gilbert is hanged by the SS, Werner turns his gun on his own army.
Franz Xaver Stannebein, a young boy at the turn of the 20th century, wants to do nothing more than fly. He carries this obsessive dream into his adulthood as a merchant in Spain.
This provocative portrait of the Bulgarian-Jewish scriptwriter and novelist, Angel Wagenstein (1922-2023), offers a fresh perspective on the past century. It takes viewers down unfamiliar historical and ideological paths and revisits the revolutions of 1989 and after with a critical eye.
Presented here are nine short films that feature: film director Slatan Dudow; actor Martin Brandt; authors Erich Fried, Erich Weinert, and Arnold Zweig; photographer Walter Ballhause; cartoonist Leo Haas; and journalist Egon Erwin Kisch.
Hamburg, Germany 1934: An executioner is needed. Teetjen (Erwin Geschonneck) makes the biggest mistake of his life. Because his butcher shop is facing bankruptcy, he agrees to execute a group of political prisoners for the Nazis. Once this becomes known, Teetjen’s life falls apart.
In an act of friendship and solidarity between two mining towns in 1929, the locals of Kriwoj Rog, Russia, give their flag as a gift to the locals of Bergstedt, Germany.
Hans Bronstein is about to finish secondary school and needs to decide what to do next with his life. But Hans has a difficult time dealing with his authoritarian father and with his sister Elle, who is hospitalized in a mental institution.
Günter Walcher, 40-years-old, is a hardworking, apolitical West German businessman caught in a moral conflict. He is offered a promotion to become the head of a division—on the condition that he find a reason to fire Zacharias, a communist and the work council chairman.
This DVD compilation chronicles the year 1948 through film.