Die Grünstein-Variante

The plot revolves around three men waiting to be deported in a prison. To escape the monotony, they form chess pieces from their bread rations, with which they then play against each other. Grünstein, a Polish Jew, proves to be a real talent, because although he is a beginner, he manages to defeat even the experienced player Lodeck, a German sailor, with his "Grünstein Variant".

The Devil's Elixirs

Young seminary student Franziskus (Benjamin Besson) has been ceremonially ordained. He wants to escape the harshness and injustice of the world and devote himself to the service of God in the quiet seclusion of a monastery. He is also hoping to forget the beautiful lady Aurelie (Jaroslava Schallerová), whose life he saved in a flooded brook and with whom he spent an amorous night. He knows that her father would never allow her to marry him. But the devil dressed in a monk's habit and under the name Viktorin (Andrzej Kopiczynski) intervenes i...

Der kleine und der große Klaus

Solo Sunny

Sunny is the singer of band trying to establish itself in the music-scene of East-Berlin. They play regular gigs in small towns, but Sunny feels out of touch with the audience and her life as a whole. She begins a relationship with the amateur saxophonist and studied philosopher Ralph who writes her a very personal song - but his obsession with death and unfaithful lifestyle is not for her. After getting into a quarrel with a band member who harasses her and telling off a show-host she is thrown out of the band. Abandoned, she struggles to r...

Junge Frau von 1914

Am grauen Strand, am grauen Meer

An adaptation of Theodor Storm's novella "Hans and Heinz Kirch".

I Survived Certain Death

Telling the prisoners of a death camp. Boxer Tony Majer, who got into a concentration camp for a fight with the Gestapo, remembers the murderous work in quarries, on the cruel torture of the Nazis and prison solidarity that helped him survive.

Käthe Kollwitz – Pictures of a Life

Kathe Kollwitz was 47 years old, and already a well established artist in Germany and abroad when Peter, her youngest son, volunteered to join the German army in WWI and was killed two weeks later. This painful tragedy changed Kollwitz's life and art forever.

The Flying Dutchman

In order to escape her narrow and restrictive life, Senta, the daughter of a rich shipowner, seeks refuge in her fantasies and dreams. In this realm of imagination, a bold and restless sea captain appears to her—the Flying Dutchman—who is cursed to wander the seas forever. In her obsessive dreams, Senta frees this man through her love for him.