Susanne (17) and Robert (18) want to get married, but because Susanne is still under-aged, she needs parental permission. With twin babies and tight finances, the newlyweds soon feel overwhelmed, and dealing with everything makes them forget the love that originally brought them together.
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.
In this documentary, Hildegard Bachert generously shares memories of her personal life and reflects on the work of 20th-century German artist Käthe Kollwitz.
Käthe Kollwitz (Jutta Wachowiak) is 47 years old and already a well-established artist in Germany and abroad when Peter, her youngest son, volunteers to join the German army in WWI and gets killed two weeks later. This painful tragedy changes Kollwitz’s life and art forever.
This playlist includes three short documentaries that are relevant for understanding director Slatan Dudow’s Weimar-era film classic Kuhle Wampe, or Who Owns the World? (1932).
How the Berliner Worker Lives
A working-class family in Berlin in 1931 where survival is difficult, with massive unemployment in the wake of the Great Depression.
This harsh, yet poetic critique of Stalinism in East Germany centers on the mythical village of Stalina in 1953. The villagers legitimize injustice by glorifying “real existing socialism” … at the same time as they experience their own destruction by the system. .
The stories of four – out of approximately 250,000 – former political prisoners in East Germany.
Director Andreas Voigt interviewed people of different ages and social backgrounds about their experiences after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. He paints an important picture of this historic period in German history, filled with radical social and economic change and insecurity.
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.