My Sister’s Good Fortune

Two lifelong friends bond whilst vacationing in a luxury Swiss Alps lodge as they ponder retirement. While Fred has no plans to resume his musical career despite the urging of his loving daughter Lena, Mick is intent on finishing the screenplay for what may be his last important film for his muse Brenda. And where will inspiration lead their younger friend Jimmy, an actor grasping to make sense of his next performance?

Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter faces the threat of execution for refusing to fight for the Nazis during World War II.

At the tense 1938 Munich Conference, former friends who now work for opposing governments become reluctant spies racing to expose a Nazi secret.

The rise and fall of Milli Vanilli, a studio group assembled by German producer Frank Farian and fronted by nightclub dancers Robert Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan. After a string of worldwide hit singles, awards and performances, it was revealed that the duo never sang a note of their songs, leading to one of the biggest scandals in music history.

In the aftermath of WWII, German-Jewish cabaret singer Nelly has to undergo facial reconstructive surgery following her survival from Auschwitz. Without recognising Nelly, her former husband Johnny asks her to help him claim his wife’s inheritance. To see if he's betrayed her, she agrees, becoming her own doppelgänger.

An ordinary working day on a construction site. Thomas, a 40-year-old crane operator, receives a call from his wife asking him to pick her up from the hospital. He finds her crying.

Paul Bacher is in crisis. If he could feel in the past as one of the most influential writers of his generation, he has long lacked ideas and impetus for a new great work. His reading tours are becoming more and more a sad affair with too much alcohol and too little public. Then Paul overflows in a drunken hitchhiker, flees first scared and later removes the body, without talking to anyone about the experience. But something is flowing in its interior. Paul starts to write again. The criticism is done, but the story about the death of a hitchhiker also arouses suspicion.

Germany in the early 19th century. "Die Vermessung der Welt" follows the two brilliant and eccentric scientists Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Friedrich Gauss on their life paths.

In October 1989, the part of the West Berlin borough of Kreuzberg called SO 36, had been largely shut off by the Wall from the rest of the city for 28 years. A lethargic sub-culture of students, artists, bohemians and barflys had flourished among crumbling buildings. Part of that microcosm is barkeeper Frank, semi-formally called 'Herr Lehmann' by friends and patrons. He hangs out drinking, sports utter disregard for anything beyond SO 36 and lazily pursues an affair with cook Katrin. His lifestyle is gradually disturbed, when his parents show up for a visit, things go awry with Katrin and his best friend Karl starts to act strange. Meanwhile, political turmoil mounts on the other side of the Wall.

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.

Abandoned at birth in the Greek mountains on a stormy night, Jon is taken in and adopted, without having known his father or mother. As a young man, he meets Iro, a warden in the prison where he is incarcerated after a deadly tragic accident. She seems to seek out his presence, takes care of him, records music for him. Jon’s eyesight begins to fail... From then on, for every loss he suffers, he will gain something in return. Thus, in spite of going blind, he will live his life more fully than ever.

A lighthearted look at the opening of the border crossing of Bornholmer Straße in Berlin from the point of view of the confused border guards.

After the wild lifestyle of a famous young German photographer almost gets him killed, he goes to Palermo, Sicily to take a break. Can the beautiful city and a beautiful local woman calm him down?

In the little town of Herzsprung - whose name harks back to an ancient legend of broken hearts - almost nothing has changed since German unification, except a rise in unemployment. Johanna, a young mother and widow, becomes one of the unemployed and lives on welfare. To make matters worse, she falls in love with a dark-skinned, roving adventurer and the whole village starts talking about it.

A largely plotless, fado-scored journey through the gloomy cobblestone streets, zombie bars, and fetid basements of a sordid harbor town populated by German-speaking sots and Portuguese guest workers. An unhappy young couple, Leni and Anton, quarrel and split separately into the rat’s ass of the evening. Everyone is looking for love, but no one finds any—although Leni does pick up a trick.

A family spends three summer days in a beautiful lake mansion close to Berlin. Together with her new lover, Irene visits her brother Alex, who still inhabits the house with Irene's writer son Konstantin. Konstantin's girl-friend pops in, too, and all of them drift away from each other more and more.

Fifteen-year-old Heinz Stielke is a Hitler Youth fanatic who is devastated to learn a hidden truth about his respected father who was a German officer in WWII: He was Jewish. Pushed out of his community after the discovery, young Heinz falls into a tailspin of alienation and anger. He is subsequently thrust into a series of social collisions across the war-torn German fatherland.

German adaptation of the Ibsen play, filmed live at the Deutsches Theater (Berlin).

In the winter of 1945/46, new teacher Hadubrant is tricked by Olly, the 14-year-old daughter of his landlady, into stealing a wild boar. It has fallen into Olly's trap, but as game is the property of the Soviet army, Hadubrant wants to put it to good use: school meals. But others in the village are also interested in the pig. The mayor wants it to fulfill his meat plan, the priest wants to swap it for coal to heat his church, the policeman wants to return it to its rightful owner, and some simply want to eat it. The pig keeps disappearing in mysterious ways. Hadubrant's commitment to his charitable cause finally earns him a delegation to the district town for "higher duties".

After a 13-year-old student disappears without a trace for a week and suddenly reappears, his mother and teachers are confronted with existential questions that change their whole view of life.

Cologne towards the end of the Second World War. The city is in ruins, everyone is afraid, many are dead. It is a time of great inhumanity. Cologne’s young Edelweiss Pirates refuse to submit to the pressure of the Nazi regime. They fight with the Hitler Youth and scrawl anti-war propaganda on walls. Karl is an Edelweiss Pirate; his younger brother, Peter, is in the Hitler Youth movement. The two young men have been alone ever since their mother’s death in a bombing raid; their father is serving at the front, and their older brother, Otto, has been killed in action. Otto’s financée, Cilly, is doing her best to survive the war with her children. Carl is trying to help her.

Suburban summer heat. Merit, Eva, Lion, Rose and David cautiously wind around their conflicted relationships. They talk, but their words don’t meet. They play theatre while rehearsing their lives. The garden needs watering. Fears of the future and traces of violence relentlessly press into the present. A narrative of the beauty and gravity that arise from discovering our individual truths.

A woman with a mysterious illness is forced into action when a group of terrorists attempt to hijack a transatlantic overnight flight. In order to protect her son she will have to reveal a dark secret, and unleash the inner monster she has fought to hide.

A bank robber becomes a teacher after being released from prison and finds himself at the center of a number of crazy adventures.

Matured through two years in prison, Babtou is looking forward to a new beginning with his buddy Dennis. A free man in a free world! But of all things, his welcome party where all the boys from the block are gathered ends in a police operation. Babtou has his hands cuffed again and is confronted with dramatic news. He will soon be deported to his “home country” of Senegal. To prevent a deportation, Babtou and Dennis are willing to do anything, including marriage.

At summer camp, young Bibi and her friends are pitted against the boys in a treasure hunt. But what's a witch to do when she loses her powers?

When robbers hit Falkenstein castle, teen witch Bibi and pal Tina hunt for the crooks, then devise a plan to save the neighbors' failing ranch.

Scenes from the seminar "Lange Sprechen." Angela Schanelec, HFBK Summer Semester 2024.

Bibi Blocksberg visits her friend Tina Martin at the riding stables during the summer vacation. This year there is to be a special horse race organized by Count Falko. However, the two friends run into trouble when Sophia von Gelenberg from an elite boarding school at Falkenstein Castle, a participant and close acquaintance of the house, arrives and tries to steal Tina's boyfriend Alexander. The shady businessman Hans Kakmann is also up to no good, and it's not just the foal Socrates, known as "Socke", he's after. Bibi tries to save Alex and Tina's relationship on the one hand and expose Kakmann's business practices on the other. But even witchcraft can't prevent her from turning everyone against her, Count Falko enrolling his son in boarding school and Kakman offering to buy the foal "Socke".

A rowdy teacher accompanies a class trip to Thailand to recover some diamonds accidentally sent there and restore the school's reputation.

11-year-old Rocca, a clever, creative and brave girl who lives all by herself in defiance of her teachers and the authorities has to fight to keep her independence and prove to everyone that a child also has the power to change the world.

When Fritjof Huber, who works in an architectural office in Munich, is sent to a hospice for the dying to take measurements, his knees shake. He is afraid of meeting people who are about to die. Yet Fritjof himself has not yet really begun to live.