Kelet-nyugati átjáró

In the summer of 1989 tens of thousands of tourists from communist East Germany came to Hungary. They were deeply disillusioned because they felt they had no future in East Germany. There was no freedom, no choice in the shops, salaries were low and they could not travel except to Eastern Europe. They wanted to go to a prosperous and free West Germany but they could not get passports, so they hoped that by travelling through Hungary, the least suppressed country of the Soviet Block, they could cross the Iron Curtain into Austria and then travel on into West Germany. For them the Hungary of twenty years ago was the new east-west passage. Written by Czes

Bernau liegt am Meer

Daniel lives in Bernau, a small town north of Berlin.This film tells this 21-year-old’s story and describes the radical right-wing milieu in which he grew up. In his candid portrait of how right-wing radicalism breeds, Daniel explains how difficult it is to break out of a vicious circle of violence, self-hatred and a right-wing extremist frame of mind.

Vom Wir zum Ich

In October 1987, the documentary film collective Amber Films from Newcastle became the first British film crew ever allowed to shoot in East Germany. They filmed the workers of the state-owned fishing concern in Warnemünde and a brigade of crane operators at the state Warnow dockyards. Just two years later, East Germany was history, including most of the jobs it once provided. Twenty-five years later, in 2014, the filmmakers returned to an utterly different Rostock. They visited the people they had filmed in 1987. Together, documentarians and subjects look at excerpts from the earlier film, and talk about the enormous changes the men and women experienced, how they dealt with them, and how they feel today.

Paradies der Tiere

On the 160-hectare grounds of the former Friedrichsfelde Palace Park, the Berlin Animal Park was established in the 1950s with the active support of the local population. In 1980, more than 7,800 animals from all continents live here. The film describes the foundation, the construction and the care of the animals in the extensive park.

Der letzte Sommer der DDR

Caligari — Wie der Horror ins Kino kam

On February 26, 1920, Robert Wiene's world-famous film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari premiered at the Marmorhaus in Berlin. To this day, it is considered a manifesto of German expressionism; a legend of cinema and a key work to understand the nature of the Weimar Republic and the constant political turmoil in which a divided society lived after the end of the First World War.

Ich bin meine eigene Frau

The life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who survived the Nazi reign as a trans woman and helped start the German gay liberation movement. Documentary with some dramatized scenes. Two actors play the young and middle aged Charlotte and she plays herself in the later years.

Heldentod - Der Tunnel und die Lüge

It was the biggest escape in the history of the Berlin Wall: in one historic night of October 1964, 57 East-Berliners try their luck through a tunnel into West Berlin. Just before the last few reach the other side, the East German border guards notice the escape and open fire. Remarkably, all the refugees and their escape agents make it out of the tunnel unscathed, but one border guard is dead: 21-year-old officer Egon Schultz.

Der rote Elvis

A documentary on the late American entertainer Dean Reed, who became a huge star in East Germany after settling there in 1973.

Lenin kam nur bis Lüdenscheid - Meine kleine deutsche Revolution

Honeckers letzte Reise

Hitlers Hollywood

Film journalist and critic Rüdiger Suchsland examines German cinema from 1933, when the Nazis came into power, until 1945, when the Third Reich collapsed. (A sequel to From Caligari to Hitler, 2015.)

Das Boot – Welterfolg aus der Tiefe

In 1981, a film about the misadventures of a German U-boat crew in 1941 becomes a worldwide hit almost four decades after the end of the World War II. Millions of viewers worldwide make Das Boot the most internationally successful German film of all time. But due to disputes over the script, accidents on the set, and voices accusing the makers of glorifying the war, the project was many times on the verge of being cancelled.

Heimatkunde

Former "Titanic" satire magazine editor Martin Sonneborn takes an undercover trip around Berlin and discovers the East-German mentality and what is left of the socialist German Democratic Republic.

Stunden der Entscheidung: Angela Merkel und die Flüchtlinge

Wendegeschichten: Riesa

Ich will da sein - Jenny Gröllmann

Im Land der Adler und der Kreuze

Großes Kino made in DDR

Der lange Abschied von der Kohle