The Proud and Sad Life of Mathias Kneißl

The Robber Mathias Kneißl became a legend in Bavaria. The film is based on the historical criminal case and describes the last year of the rebel and folk hero. At the age of 23, he is released from prison, where he has served an unreasonably harsh six-year sentence. When this becomes known, he loses his job as a carpenter and now wants to emigrate to America with his girlfriend. He hopes to earn the money for the journey by committing crimes. In the process, he fatally wounds a gendarme. Despite this, Mathias Kneißl does not leave the area ...

Dead Heart

The Australians call the endless deserts in the interior of the continent the "dead heart". Here lies the town of Birdsville, 23 houses and a bar with a liquor license. The long-awaited telephone connection arrived in 1979, 90 years after it had been applied for. For one weekend, this place at the end of the world turns into a cauldron when 5,000 Australians, tired of civilization, invade for the annual horse race, the "Birdsville Cup". They come in buses, off-road vehicles, motorcycles and sports planes and have become a veritable plague. B...

Der Al Capone vom Donaumoos

The autobiographical portrait of Theo Berger, who gained notoriety as the king of burglaries and escapes and spent most of his life in prison. His criminal career includes over 150 crimes committed since the age of 18. Theo Berger was sentenced twice to 15 years and twice to preventive detention. The film was made during his parole, which he received after contracting leukemia. But less than six months after filming was completed, Theo Berger was arrested again. Unprepared for a life in freedom, he was involved in a bank robbery. He was sent...

The World beyond the World

'Thinking machines' and 'people thinking as machines' (super-computerprogrammers who have internalized computerese) are perhaps two of a kind. But clashes with the 'real world' are preprogrammed for these machines of flesh and blood. The film traces humankind's striving to discover itself again in its mechanical creations, from the effort to construct automatons in Switzerland some 200 years ago, to a pinnacle display of the 1980ies achievements: a robot playing Haydn's 'Genesis' at the World Expo in Japan.