Pockets of Happiness

Dance teacher and mother Nadja left her son Mario with her own mother when he was little. Now she has reappeared on his doorstep, seeking a closeness that knows fewer and fewer boundaries. An uncompromising film about family relationships.

The EU has fallen apart, and in Germany, far-right populists are forming a new government. War is imminent. Jonas has deserted; he and his sister go into hiding at the home of their father, Stuber, whom Jonas has not seen since childhood. But there, the situation escalates. A catastrophe occurs even before the war has begun.

Today is Lara’s 60th birthday, which happens to fall on the same day as her pianist son’s career-defining concert. A failed pianist herself, Lara spends the time before his performance pacing about Berlin—boiling with jealousy, nerves, and pride—trying to get hold of her elusive son.

Because the German state has failed, a large number of people are living in the forest, outside of society.

When her best friend Jojo falls in love and moves on from their wild dating adventures in Berlin, Paula does everything she can to sabotage her wedding.

Young nurse Sissi lives a secluded life entirely devoted to her patients at Birkenhof asylum. Her first encounter with ex-soldier and drifter Bodo has a lasting impact. He causes an accident in which he provides first aid, Sissi wonders if he may be the man of her dreams. But when she finds him weeks later she is rejected, as Bodo is stuck somewhere between a traumatic past and a criminal future.

Anja and Frank are enjoying their family vacation sailing on the Baltic Sea. Anja leaves their two young children alone on the boat for just a moment and when she returns, they are nowhere to be found.

When successful archaeologist Ursula Scheuer makes a sensational discovery of a body during a bog excavation, her demented mother suddenly dies. Unexpectedly, a childhood trauma breaks out for Ursula. The appearance of her new assistant Mel is also puzzling: she seems to know Ursula’s past very well. Ursula is increasingly drawn into a mysterious web of fantasies and deceptions and must finally free herself from it.

A chemical engineer of foreign origin faces discrimination and bullying at work, plunging him into an identity crisis.

Vivian loves sex and pursues her unusual preferences in excessive affairs. Everything changes when she gets involved with the Senator for Justice Ertel, because here the boundaries between sex play and rape become blurred. She goes to court. In her lawyer Maria, she finds an understanding supporter who, like Vivian, enjoyed her freedom in her youth...

Springe, a bourgeois little town in Lower Saxony in the 1970s and 80s. Evelin is caught between shame, worry, and social pressure due to the otherness of her son Oliver, who ultimately escapes to the Kiez quarter of Hamburg. Thanks to a big heart, an irrepressible sense of humour, and the ability to get up every time he’s down, Oliver manages the transformation to Olivia Jones, drag icon, entertainer, and Kiez restaurateur.

Follows the lives of different couples in dealing with their love lives in various loosely interrelated tales all set during a frantic few days before Christmas in Frankfurt, Germany.

After surviving a racist attack, state prosecutor Seyo Kim takes her own case to court – confronting both the perpetrators and a justice system that turns a blind eye to right-wing extremism.

Eleven moving dates, eight friends: Philipp, Wiebke, Jessica, Maria, Swantje, Michael, Thomas, Dina – all in their twenties and mutually lonesome. And always searching: For a new city, a new job, an own apartment, a new, or even an old love. The search is never-ending, and so they repeatedly find themselves at a ritual gathering: someone moving. Boxes are shifted from one side of Berlin to the other, or the length and breadth of Germany, from one abode to the next as one life is exchanged for another. In 3 ZIMMER/KÜCHE/BAD, director Dietrich Brüggemann portrays existences in which relationships, social networks and backdrops are in a constant state of flux; where best friends are the only, and therefore the most valuable constant. Humorous sketches of the self-conception of a generation for whom moving has become the symbol of a life on the go.

Paula, a young supporting character, studies at the Main Character School and dreams on graduating to become a lead.

Germany, right after the re-unification. The people are out of control, blind hatred towards immigrants is common sense. In this time, a social-worker, with the mission to bring a Polish family to their destination (an immigration camp in a little provincial town called Rassau), gets kidnapped just as the family. Chief inspector Koern and his girl-friend start to investigate in this matter in Rassau, exploring a world of obsessive sex, mislead lust and an over-whelming irrational love to the German nation, infiltrating anyone's mind. Rascism doesn't start with shaved hair and boots but rather in the middle of society itself...

Ecology, equality, sustainability: Anita and Sarah pursue lofty political goals as they establish a new feminist party. By contrast, the men who are infected by a new type of virus tend to have less honorable intentions. The consequences: sexual obsession, molestation, and death. Urgent effort is put into developing a vaccine. But should the male sex be saved at all?

Using unpublished and newly digitalised archive footage and film material, Bettina Böhler has brilliantly assembled this film about the life and work of the exceptional artist Christoph Schlingensief, who died in 2010.

In a single afternoon, the early retiree Hubert Lotzmann manages to dupe his sisters-in-law, to betray his autonomous daughter Bille to the police and to forget his wife Annemarie’s birthday. And when she finds out that he has sucked her beloved budgie into the vacuum cleaner and in the process ruined her longstanding Fuzzbuster 500 vacuum cleaner, Annemarie’s patience runs out and she kicks him out: she gives him exactly two hours till dinner – if he doesn’t return with the repaired appliance, he doesn’t need to bother returning at all!

A performance artist deals with body images. The boundary between performance and reality dissolves and leads to a conflict between audience and art.

For Neele and her life partner Steff, the dream of having one's own child finally seems to come true: Steff is pregnant. However, there was a confusion in the artificial insemination - instead of their carefully selected sperm donor, they caught a sperm donation from a gay couple: Kalle and Jens also want a baby and consider the confusion as a kind of coincidence. While the two men look forward to their time as active fathers, Neele and Steff see their harmonious trinity at risk.

Andreas wants Kim, but Kim wants something more. She wants a penis. She doesn't want to talk about this with Andreas. And when their best friend, Anna, moves in, it all gets to be a bit much. But if two people feel lonely around each other, can they be less alone when there are three of them?

Bärbel Schmitz buys her husband a shirt for his birthday. When she discovers a call for help from Bangladesh in it, a story begins that will turn Bärbel and her family's regular, conventional life completely upside down.

Translator Lena Feldhusen travels to Copenhagen to supposedly research the Danish writer Karen Blixen. However, there is another reason behind the trip: the search for her father Carl, whom she last saw in her early childhood. During the trip, she meets the charming Mads, who also turns out to be a Blixen expert and runs the museum of the same name. Her trip becomes a confrontation with herself, old family conflicts and the chance of a new love.

Nothing special happens in the quiet, peaceful, and sad German city of Anröchte. Until the day in which its residents’ daily lives are disrupted by strange events: Hun knights armed with sabers perpetrate an arbitrary massacre for no apparent reason, decapitating people at random. Inspector Konka arrives in town to solve the mistery, along with his faithful assistant Walter, a philosopher type who reflects on the human condition as he wanders the melancholic streets of Anröchte.

A young filmmaker must come to terms with her identity when she is invited to show her short film in her hometown.