This historical satire, based on Heinrich Mann’s world-famous novel, Der Untertan, is ranked by film critics among the 100 Most Significant German Films of all time.
The stories of four – out of approximately 250,000 – former political prisoners in East Germany.
In a loose set of cabaret pieces, Steffen Mensching and Hans-Eckardt Wenzel—highly acclaimed East German poets, songwriters and clowns—satirize East German life in its final days and the arrival of new times after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
After causing a deadly hit-and-run motorcycle accident, Conny Schenk spends two years in prison, where he is able to complete a printing apprenticeship and is released early for good behavior.
In a small village in West Prussia in the 1870s, Germans, Poles, Gypsies and Jews live together as neighbors. One night Johann, a German mill-owner, secretly opens the dam gates and floods the mill of his Jewish rival Levin.
Ewald Honig (Erwin Geschonneck) can't break his bad habit. Hardly has he crossed over into the GDR when the strapping, well-built man in his late fifties once again starts courting ladies with fraudulent intentions.
It is 1988. Jacob (Gottfried John), from Hamburg in West Germany, falls in love with Elisabeth (Angelica Domröse) in East Germany. When they secretly meet in East Berlin, it seems the Stasi (secret police) know about it. When Jacob visits her village, someone informs on him and he is deported.
Only two years after WWII, the small village of Bötzow in Brandenburg is struggling to rebuild and the vacuum of social order has allowed a gang of youth to impose their own reign of terror over the town.
A 74-year-old man is brought before a regional court in Dresden. The former high-up SS official is brought back to the scene of his crimes after more than 40 years.
In 1948, Horst Kramm (Alexander Lang) joins the criminal police force in Berlin and receives his first assigment: arresting a prostitute for theft. While on the case, the unconventional detective quickly sniffs out a more serious crime.