Investigative journalist Fabian Groys enjoys great freedom since the stories he uncovers make for strong sales. He works for a political news magazine in their Berlin head office. In this context, his arrogance raises few eyebrows.Read More »
Germany
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Christoph Hochhäusler – Die Lügen der Sieger AKA The Lies of the Victors (2014)
2011-2020Christoph HochhäuslerDramaGermany -
Stephan Geene – Umsonst AKA For Nothing (2014)
Drama2011-2020GermanyStephan GeeneUnannounced, Aziza is once again standing in her room – internship, Portugal, everything canceled. But her room is occupied. Her mother, Trixi, has rented it out. Zach lives there now, a twenty-something from New Zealand, who came to Germany on a one-way ticket. Starting from this situation, the film develops an almost documentary-style portrait of a Kreuzberg ‘situation’: everything is readily available, time, people, summer, streets. And in the end a crash, the film itself: ‘for nothing’?Read More »
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Carl Boese & Paul Wegener – Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam AKA The Golem: How He Came Into the World (1920) (HD)
1911-1920Carl BoeseGermanyHorrorPaul WegenerSilentIn 16th-century Prague, a rabbi creates the Golem – a giant creature made of clay. Using sorcery, he brings the creature to life in order to protect the Jews of Prague from persecution.Read More »
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Wolfgang Staudte – Die Mörder Sind Unter Uns AKA The Murderers Are Among Us (1946)
1941-1950GermanyThrillerWarWolfgang StaudteSynopsis:
Susanne Wallner returns to the ruins of Berlin from a Concentration Camp after WW2 to discover that someone else lives in her apartment: Dr. Hans Mertens, the war made him depressive and he drinks a lot of alcohol. Susanne asks him to go but he doesn’t want to, so they share Susanne’s apartment and even discover their sympathy and then their love for each other. That encourages him a little, of course. But then he hears that Ferdinand Brückner is still alive and also lives in Berlin. Brückner was his Captain during WW2, he gave the order to kill more than 100 innocent people, many children and women among them, on Christmas 1942 in Poland.Read More » -
Konrad Wolf – Sterne AKA Stars (1959)
1951-1960GermanyKonrad WolfPoliticsWarSynopsis:
A detachment of Nazi soldiers escorting Greek Jews to the Oswiencim death camp stops at a small Bulgarian town in 1943. Walter, the non-commissioned officer from the Nazi army, a skeptical and disillusioned intellectual, falls most unexpectedly (even for himself) in love with the Jewish girl Rutt. This new feeling gradually makes him stop and reflect on the events taking place around him and comes face to face with the inhuman nature of fascism. He is tortured by anxious thought about the part he is called to play in the eternal struggle between evil and good. Helped by Bulgarian resistance fighters, Walter organizes Rutt’s escape. When the time arrives he realizes that he has been deceived about the exact departure hour of the prisoners.
— Georgi Djulgerov.Read More » -
F.W. Murnau – Die Finanzen des Großherzogs AKA The Finances of the Grand Duke (1924)
1921-1930ComedyF.W. MurnauGermanySilentThe likeable and carefree Grand Duke of Abacco is in dire straits. There is no money left to service the State’s debt; the main creditor is looking forward to expropriating the entire Duchy. The marriage with Olga, Grand Duchess of Russia, would solve everything, but a crucial letter of hers about the engagement has been stolen. Besides, a bunch of revolutionaries and a dubious businessman have other plans regarding the Grand Duke. With the intrusion of adventurer Philipp Collins into the Grand Duke’s affairs, a series of frantic chases, plots and counter-plots begins…Read More »
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Edgar Reitz & Ula Stöckl – Geschichten vom Kübelkind AKA Tales Of The Dumpster Kid (1971)
1971-1980Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtArthouseEdgar ReitzExperimentalGermanyUla StöcklA woman screams, a newborn baby cries. A nurse leaves the hospital and dumps a bucketfull of slimy afterbirth into a bin.Moments later, Kubelkind (“Dumpster-kid”, an Austrian insult) emerges fully grown from the slime. “Frau Dr. Welfare”, a cold, upper middle-class do-gooder discovers Kubelkind in the dustbin and plans to “save” her. But such “polymorphous-perverse, infantile monsters” have no place in normal society….Read More »
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Jean-Marie Straub – Nicht versöhnt oder Es hilft nur Gewalt wo Gewalt herrscht AKA Not Reconciled (1965)
1961-1970ArthouseGermanyJean-Marie StraubShort FilmJONATHAN ROSENBAUM:
Quote:“Far from being a puzzle film (like Citizen Kane or Muriel), Not Reconciled is better described as a ‘lacunary film’, in the same sense that Littré defines a lacunary body: a whole composed of agglomerated crystals with intervals among them, like the interstitial spaces between the cells of an organism”. Jean-Marie Straub’s description of his second film and second Heinrich Böll adaptation (after Machorka-Muff) helps to explain why, although it has more plot than any of his other works — containing even more characters and intrigues than Othon — it is virtually impossible to paraphrase in the form of a synopsis. Read More »
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Paul Leni – Das Tagebuch des Dr. Hart aka The Diary of Dr. Hart (1916)
1911-1920DramaGermanyPaul LeniSilent“Dr. Robert Hart visits his friend Ursula von Hohenau in Saxony in July 1914. There he hears about the Austrian ultimatum to Serbia. He immediately returns to his home town where, just before mobilisation, he meets the Polish count Bransky and his daughter Jadwiga, the French Vicomte Latour and the Russian counsellor of embassy count Bronislaw Krascinsky. Bronislaw is madly in love with Jadwiga and jealous of Dr. Hart. After the outbreak of the war Dr. Hart works close to the Polish frontlines. Bronislaw leads the Russian troops in this area. When Bronislaw is wounded during a battle with the Germans Dr. Hart finds him and takes care of his wounds.”Read More »