Angela Merkel's decision in autumn 2015 to open the borders for refugees split the country - some praised the moral stance, others criticized the surrender of sovereignty. Yet what would appear to be well-planned activity is in reality a policy of muddling along, chance, trial and error. The Driven Ones is a chronicle of the refugee crisis which shows that the political actors are being driven along, crushed between self-imposed constraints and events that have spun out of control.
The Grand Budapest Hotel tells of a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars and his friendship with a young employee who becomes his trusted protégé. The story involves the theft and recovery of a priceless Renaissance painting, the battle for an enormous family fortune and the slow and then sudden upheavals that transformed Europe during the first half of the 20th century.
Once again, the "border crossing" is celebrated, as every seven years in the Upper Hessian town of Bergen. It is really turbulent at this folk festival, when the municipal boundaries are confirmed from old tradition and everything is upside down. For this occasion leaves Thomas Weidmann his girlfriend and flees because of his botched university career from the city of Berlin back to his native village. At the party, he meets Kerstin Werner, whose life has just come out of joint - her marriage is broken and her husband Jürgen on the jump to another, younger woman.
East Germany. Summer, late 70's. Three years after her boyfriend Wassilij's apparent death, Nelly Senff decides to escape from behind the Berlin wall with her son Alexej, leaving her traumatic memories and past behind. Pretending to marry a West German, she crosses the border to start a new life in the West. But soon her past starts to haunt her as the Allied Secret Service begin to question Wassilij's mysterious disappearance. Is he still alive? Was he a spy? Plagued by her past and fraught with paranoia, Nelly is forced to choose between discovering the truth about her former lover and her hopes for a better tomorrow.
Alaska Johansson is the perfect woman and she is the best in her profession as a headhunter. One day she is fired by her boss, a married man who she has an affair with. He also tells her that their relationship has no future. She decides that her best option is to commit suicide with a poison cocktail. She is saved when a child in a Halloween costume enters her apartment demanding sweets. Something is not right about the child. Later her neighbor is going to tell here that there never was a child. Alaska’s world is turning upside down, her perceptions seem to be merely illusions. When her car starts to act on its own and causes a crash, she becomes convinced that someone is conspiring against her. Or is there another, darker secret in Alaska’s life?
Sommer ’04 is a character study of a family on vacation. German director Stefan Krohmer examines the emotional abyss and problems behind the seemingly nice facade of an intact family as they experience guilt, love and jealousy.
"Willkommen im Club" shows the influences of unemployment (actually the number one theme in Germany) on daily life. What happens within the families, what happens with the self-esteem of people who unexpectedly lose their work? By choosing different points of view, we wanted to find out what happens beyond the daily news.
Nabou, an Afro-German slacker, desperatly wants to win back her club kid ex-girlfriend Katja. Nabou becomes a housekeeper for Katja's neighbor, Kim, who is a workaholic that is striving to become a partner in an advertising agency. A refreshing romantic comedy with the ingredients of a classic lesbian feature: whimsical sexiness, mistaken identity, and general madness and mayhem.
Grandma Vera travels by bus from a small Polish town to Pinneberg to celebrate her birthday with granddaughter Linda, her husband Lothar and their two children Jan and Christina. Together with Lothar's stuffy, uptight parents, they spend a fun-filled evening. But the next morning, Grandma is dead. Although Grandma Vera actually wanted to lie next to Grandpa Pyotr in her hometown of Kovalov, the family cannot afford an expensive funeral. So there is only one option: to transport Grandma themselves.