Über die Grenzen

While subjected to the horrors of WWII Germany, young Liesel finds solace by stealing books and sharing them with others. Under the stairs in her home, a Jewish refugee is being sheltered by her adoptive parents.

Wherever 9-year-old Benni ends up, she is expelled. She has become what child protection services call a “system crasher.” But she is not looking to change her ways, and has one goal: go back home to her mother. When anger management trainer Micha is hired to help, suddenly there is hope.

A jester costume worn by dressmaker Dolores comes to life when she is diagnosed with breast cancer. Haunted by the gloomy jester, Dolores tries to maintain her normal life and vehemently refuses to tell her family about the diagnosis.

Irka and Raya are best friends, one always knows immediately what the other wants. Irka is young, lively and a girl, Raya is old, blind and a proud mare who had great times as a show horse. The two are inseparable. But when Raya has a foal, Irka turns her attention to the small, helpless and cute animal. Her father had actually promised that she could keep both horses. One day, however, he tells her that she has to part with one of the horses. Irka has to decide for herself: The cute foal or the old mare?

Defectors from Hitler's army join the French Foreign Legion and end up in Vietnam in the late '40s.

East Berlin, 1989: 30-year-old photojournalist Georg follows a beautiful, mysterious dancer Miss Albena. Blinded by love, he dreams about her. His imagination and reality – a world in the midst of radical social change – get mixed up.

In a small village in West Prussia in the 1870s, Germans, Poles, Gypsies and Jews live together as neighbors. One night Johann, a German mill-owner, secretly opens the dam gates and floods the mill of his Jewish rival Levin. After his business is ruined and his calls for justice go unanswered, Levin leaves town.

Ela, a young actress, gets a role with the well-known theatre director Franz Kramer. The production is a great opportunity for Ela, but also comes with pressure. Kramer constantly oversteps Elas boundaries, and the situation worsens when Kramer sexually harasses her. Ela struggles to reconstruct her role as a self-confident character-and realizes that to do so, she has to take the same steps of self-empowerment in her real life.

Maja Wegner is in her late thirties and a single mother of a teenage daughter. To give her stale life a new direction, she decides to start all over again in the big city. She sells her house in the countryside, quits her job, and moves with her daughter to Berlin. There, she finds a job as a conductor for the railroad company. Although Maja soon finds new friends in her apartment building, the search for a new life partner does not come off so easily.

In 1943, while the Allies are bombing Berlin and the Gestapo is purging the capital of Jews, a dangerous love affair blossoms between two women – one a Jewish member of the underground, the other an exemplar of Nazi motherhood.

Scenes from an East German marriage. A young couple, Sonya and Jens, are very much in love; they get married and have a child. When Sonya wants to go back to work after her maternity leave, they clash for the first time; Jens insists that she remain a full-time wife and mother. Until Death Do Us Part turns an actual police report into a gripping drama, as the director explores the depths of his characters' emotions, driving the conflict to a catastrophic climax.

When their ship is sunk in the Indian Ocean during the first world war, 50 men have to cross infinite stretches of sea and desert, avoid enemies, find allies and finally make it home to Germany. A breathtaking real-life odyssey.

The furniture mover Stefan is on the verge of serving his time in the military. He has always been a guy with distinctive civil courage who cannot stand injustice. Now he has ten days left in which he plans to make a lot of decisions, not least the decision with which woman he wants to spend his life. Stefan is picky, however, and none of them seems good enough for him.

A young soldier enters Germany with Soviet troops at the end of WWII, feeling like a stranger in his homeland. As he meets Germans, he grapples with his ambivalence, realizing he is both a victor and one of the vanquished. His inquisitive nature leads him to confront the atrocities and lies he encounters along the way.

13-year-old Jonja goes on vacation with the wealthy family of her best friend Paul. None of this would be a problem if the girl had told her mother about it - but she hasn't. Meanwhile, the days at the lake turn out to be extremely idyllic: Jonja falls in love with a girl and her friendship with Paul is strengthened even further. When it becomes clear that Jonja has lied, emotions run high...

East-Berlin, 1961, shortly after the erection of the Wall. Konrad, Sophie and three of their friends plan a daring escape to Western Germany. The attempt is successful, except for Konrad, who remains behind. From then on, and for the next 28 years, Konrad and Sophie will attempt to meet again, in spite of the Iron Curtain. Konrad, who has become a reputed Astrophysicist, tries to take advantage of scientific congresses outside Eastern Germany to arrange encounters with Sophie. But in a country where the political police, the Stasi, monitors the moves of all suspicious people (such as Konrad's sister Barbara and her husband Harald), preserving one's privacy, ideals and self-respect becomes an exhausting fight, even as the Eastern block begins its long process of disintegration.

Twenty-year-old electronics technician Liane, desperate to escape her broken home, resists a demotion at work and falls for research student Jürgen. Fiercely defending colleague Kalle against unfair accusations, she overshadows her own troubles, including an unplanned pregnancy. When Jürgen betrays her, Liane collapses, and she wonders if a new beginning with steadfast Kalle is possible.

Friedrich Wilhelm Georg Platow worked for the railways his entire working life. He took up service at the small station of Luege 34 years ago. Now, the line is to be electrified and Platow, who cannot cope with the new technology, has to work on a secondary local line. Georg, his son, a railway worker as well, is to attend a training course, but Georg refuses to go. Then his father comes to a surprising and highly unusual decision. He pretends to be Georg Platow, making himself twenty years younger than he really is and registers for the course.

Berlin-Gropiusstadt, a prefabricated housing estate on the outskirts of the city. On the last day of the year, three young people are at a turning point: Tarik receives a letter about his impending deportation, Stella gets accepted to an acting school abroad, and Luan wakes up from a nightmare in which he is left behind by both of them.

Maria, a young student sees her brother Dieter going to prison for sedition against the state. She starts an affair with Paul, a judge who turns out to be the one who sentenced her brother, which eventually leads to a confrontation.

Based on a switched identity, in circumstances that are found in real life as well as fiction, this drama tells the story of two soldiers fighting together in World War I. Karl (Joachim Latsch) and Richard (Hans-Use Bauer) become close friends while serving time in a German POW camp. One day Karl manages a successful escape and goes to Richard's home where he seeks refuge posing as Richard. But Richard's wife Anna (Kathrin Waligura) has never given up hope that her husband is still alive -- a possibility that would shatter Karl's proposed new life. In fact, Richard did not die in the POW camp. This film shared the Grand Prix award at the 1985 Berlin Film Festival.

Sonja is struggling to deal with her parent separation, and find her feelings for her best friend might not just be a phase.

During the Greek summer in the war year of 1944, a German military unit sets up camp on the plateau of Thebes. Armed with a 16 mm camera, the captain of the unit, a former professor for classical Greek philology, comes up with the idea to film the myth of Oedipus.

Journalist Marga is commissioned by her editor-in-chief to interview a rock singer, Anne, from Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin. When Robert, an unpublished poet and Anne's ex-boyfriend, shows up, Marga becomes way more interested in her interview assignment. A love triangle comedy set in the bohemian East Berlin Prenzlauer Berg atmosphere combined with 1980s punk rock music à la Nina Hagen that comments on East German taboo topics, including environmental issues.

A story spanning three generations, from 1871 to 1945. When Gustav Wengler, a farmer’s son, returns from the Franco-German war in 1871, he goes to work for a precision mechanics and optical company, where he soon becomes a master craftsman. Wengler loyally promises the owner on his deathbed that his sons and grandsons will also stand by the company.

Winter 1968. Historian Dr. Dallow is released from prison. He is still trying to cope with and understand why he was put behind bars for 21 months for defamation of the state. His supposed "crime:" for five minutes he accompanied a cabaret chanson on the piano. The film shows what "ordinary socialism" was like, letting the audience feel the threat under which the people in the GDR had to live over many years.

The story of a Leipzig family from 1987 to the Monday demonstrations in 1989. After the death of her father, a high-ranking officer in the People's Police, the daughter joins the resistance movement around St. Nicholas Church. Phenomena such as obedience, followership, spying and resistance are illustrated in this haunting film based on individual people. A film that provides food for thought for the discussion about the fall of the Berlin Wall and recapitulates contemporary history.

A young man from an early age falls in love with a girl whose family is not in good standing with the ruling Communist party. His father however is a member of the "Stasi", the secret state police. The father not only hinders his son's relationship with the girl, but he arranges for his son, after finishing school, to become a Stasi spy himself.

A mute man with a violent past is forced to take on the teeming underworld of a near-future Berlin as he searches for his missing girlfriend.

A mysterious serial killer is shocking the underworld. Scotland Yard is investigating the case. Clues lead the detectives to Blackwhite Castle.

Klaus has a new job. And it's brilliant. The best job in the world. There is just one small snag: after work.

Married couple Peter and Felicitas Kallweit are facing an extraordinary marital test: at the same time, the purchase of a new, more prestigious car and a trip abroad seem possible. They have to make a choice between the two.

A small village is haunted by strange and awful murders. The scared villagers turn to two officials in search for help to solve the crimes. The investigations point to a very perfidious kind of murders: All victims were nibbled off shortly before or after their death. Could an animal be the cause of the strange bite tracks in face and arms of the dead bodies?

Little Felix Grosser is given a chest full of tin toys by old Mrs. Goldberg. The woman had once saved the toys for her future grandchildren, but her children were too busy working to start a family. Now Felix receives the old toy and Mrs. Goldberg warns him not to let it fall into other people's hands. Felix takes a white, dancing "magic horse" from the chest into his nursery, along with various other items. His parents, who are busy remodeling the bathroom despite a lack of materials, only find out after a while that the pony is a gift from Mrs. Goldberg, who no longer lives in the house. They have no idea about the chest full of toys in the attic.

Summer holidays are beginning for 13 years old Daniel, a boy from East Berlin. He does not know yet that his parents are going to get divorced. They are afraid of Daniel`s reaction, so they have not told him about their decision until now. Together they drive to a village in the mountains. There Daniel finally recognizes the truth about his parents marital problems. When Daniel has an accident, this brings his parents together again, at least for the moment...

804, Thuringia. An orphan boy, called Bengel, lives in a monastery and is teased by the nuns because of his ugliness. He nurses a black rider, who is shunned by everyone and is said to have the plague, back to health. The rider tells him about the missing Bogumil, son of the Slavic king Slavomir, who was to marry Reglindis, the daughter of the Margrave of Thuringia, by order of Charlemagne. And he asks Bengel about his origins. Bengel now believes he is Bogumil. He goes to the castle and meets a beautiful girl who also thinks he is beautiful. It is Reglindis, she is blind. The girl senses the boy's inner beauty and is very fond of him. Her father, however, wants to kill him. Bengel narrowly escapes death twice, the Black Rider impressively proves his identity with Bogumil and finally there is a happy ending.