Maria (Corinna Harfouch), a rising theater star in Nazi Germany, is in love with Mark (André Hennicke), a Jewish actor.

Farmer Juan Quin Quin survives in pre-revolutionary Cuba by his wits – as an altar boy, circus performer, bullfighter, coffee planter and revolutionary. The poor but shrewd farmer even plays the part of Jesus Christ with a traveling theater company.

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.

Starting in 1975, Lutz Dammbeck worked as a freelance artist for the state-owned East German DEFA Studios. By 1986, when he left the GDR for West Germany, he had directed a total of six shorts for DEFA.

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.

Alice is a drama teacher who goes on a cultural mission to a small town where the most bizarre occurrences are commonplace.

Despite his lack of enthusiasm, film student Ralf is assigned to make a documentary about a team of six women workers at a light bulb factory in Berlin. At first, the team seems to work and get along together without a hitch.

Havana 1914 – the turmoil surrounding WWI engulfs the daughter of a recently-deceased, wealthy slave trader. She falls in love with her cousin, an idealistic journalist, but is tied to her unfaithful husband and obsolete bourgeois values.

On August 13th, 1961—the night the Berlin Wall goes up—three people must make a decision that will change their lives forever…

By the time the DEFA Studio for Animation Film closed in 1992, it had produced more than 800 shorts in a wide variety of styles and techniques.