In the heat of the summer lays a lonesome house in the countryside where nine year old twin brothers await their mother’s return. When she comes home, bandaged after cosmetic surgery, nothing is like before and the children start to doubt whether this woman is actually who she says she is.
After Sam, a penniless Afro-German singer, discovers he's HIV positive, he gets utterly drunk, spends a few miserable days, but promptly falls (back) in love. Amidst a crumbling former East Berlin (its bulidings, cars, people & culture), Sam develops a "family" for the new millenium, for the new generation of post-drug cocktail AIDS victims. The fragile "family" he forms includes his on-again-off-again boyfriend Rainer, and his best friend Bastl with his latest fling, Mike. Like the old, schmaltzy East German songs which Sam is recording, the sweet innocence of the characters struggle to prevail, the misfortunes of the characters nothwithstanding.
Various German tourists arrive at the African vacation hotel "Leisure Lodge". Businessman Harry Weber wants to seduce his secretary Julia undisturbed, but unbeknownst to him, his wife Melanie has also arrived to seduce skier Toni. Weber's business partner, the industrialist Pfefferkorn, also turns up, and Weber's secretary is trying to woo his son Florian. Harry is given the call girl Christine by a friend, but Pfefferkorn is also after her. Hairdresser Agathe is the first to recognize the connections and uses her knowledge for business purposes. Finally, Toni's fiancée Resi arrives and adds to the confusion.
Dutch police officer Van der Valk is pulled away for a private investigation for a friend of the chief of police to find the missing junior manager. When he gets to know his woman, he is fascinated by the thought of running away with her.
The von Trapp family are struggling to survive in America, where their performances of European church music are not popular with the audiences. Only when they start performing more upbeat Austrian folk songs and even some American numbers do they become a success and finally find security and a new home.
Dr. Fritz Böhler is a prisoner of war doctor in the Soviet POW camp 5110/47 near Stalingrad. Despite the harshest conditions, he tries to help his fellow prisoners with the simplest means. But when his assistant Dr. Schultheiss falls in love with the Russian doctor Alexandra Kasalinskaja, Schultheiss not only endangers his own life - because Alexandra is the lover of First Lieutenant Markow.
"The Trapp Family" is a true story based on the popular novel by the Baroness Von Trapp of Austria. The film was made in 1956, some years before the other film based on the Trapp Family's life was released - a little movie named "The Sound of Music".
10-year-old Rosmarin von Stetten lives with his widowed father Robert in the big city. During the holidays one day in the morning Rosmarin goes to the lake near the castle and meets Thymian, the poorest boy of the village, whose mother did not come back from the war and who has to do several jobs in the village for his living. The boys enter a boat, but both fall into the lake. Thymian crawls out of the water first and is found by a servant from the castle, who thinks he is Rosmarin and bring him to the castle and to bed. The boy doesn't know what happens and thinks he's spellbound...
German-language version of Duvivier's MARIANNE DE MA JEUNESSE, filmed separately with a largely different cast (thus, not the same film). No known US release.