Stille Liebe

David Hare concludes his trilogy of films about MI5 renegade Johnny Worricker with another fugue on power, secrets and the British establishment. Johnny Worricker goes on the run with Margot Tyrell across Europe, and with the net closing in, the former MI5 man knows his only chance of resolving his problems is to return home and confront prime minister Alec Beasley.

Vienna, Austria, 1910. The young painter Egon Schiele is a rising artist, provocative and free, whose work, characterized by eroticism, shocks as much as it fascinates art lovers.

Eleven directors from eleven countries each contribute an eleven-minute short reflecting on the events of 11 September 2001: A village teacher in Iran tries to explain to her young students what's happened; city kids in Burkina Faso think they've spotted Osama bin Laden; a deaf Frenchwoman in Manhattan writes a Dear John letter to a man who left that morning for work at the World Trade Center; a Chilean remembers Allende; events recall other deaths; a mother endures more than her son's death. Tones vary, as do the locales. Most concern coming to terms with the events of the day, but at least one confronts the viewer with tragedy and death.

In 18th-century Sicily, deaf-mute highborn Marianna Ucrìa is forced to marry at age 13, bearing three children before even turning 16, when she finally gives birth to a boy. Despite everything, she'll find a way to emancipate herself from the oppressive social conventions of the time.

Beyond Silence is about a family and a young girl’s coming of age story. This German film looks into the lives of the deaf and at a story about the love for music. A girl who has always had to translate speech into sign language for her deaf parents yet when her love for playing music grows strong she must decide to continue doing something she cannot share with her parents.

Two trouble-causing brothers, who in the second generation after World War II Germany live, are in the center of this German made for TV movie. The movie makes a subject out of their everyday lives and the helpless attempt for them to build a normal life.

During World War II, Switzerland severely limited refugees: "Our boat is full." A train from Germany halts briefly in an isolated corner of Switzerland. Six people jump off seeking asylum: four Jews, a French child, and a German soldier. They seek temporary refuge with a couple who run a village inn. They pose as a family: the deserter as husband, Judith as his wife, an old man from Vienna as her father, his granddaughter and the French lad, whom they beg to keep silent, as their children. Judith's teenage brother poses as a soldier. The fabrication unravels through chance and the local constable's exact investigation. Whom will the Swiss allow to stay? Who gets deported?

A gang of Berlin crash kids meet regularly on the roof of the former GDR Foreign Ministry. They swarm out to break into cars, get high on drugs and take part in life-threatening races. One of them is killed in the process, adding to the maelstrom of despair and violence. The leader Mario gets involved with Russian mobsters, and when he realizes that his girlfriend Sarah has fallen in love with the newcomer Robert, he steers his friends into a deadly catastrophe, furious with jealousy.

In order to be reunited with Mahmood (Ören), a man she was promised to as a young girl, 20-year-old Shirin (Erten) leaves the life she had in a small village in Turkey in search of him.

An expert magician is hired to entertain world leaders at a peace summit. Unfortunately, he finds himself hopelessly entangled in an elaborate terrorist assassination plot.

When land surveyor K arrives at a small village that houses a castle, local authorities refuse to allow him to enter. As he tries to convince the officials that they sent for him, they clamp down with increasingly complicated bureaucratic obstacles.

The 23-year-old Bruno accidentally clashes with society, the judicial and the police. Once he has exceeded the legal limits, he is stuck to the wrong side of the law.

In the midst of WW I, a doctor and a lawyer team up to turn a ramshackle old mountain chateau into a sanatorium/health spa that caters to the afflicted from most every stratum of European society, most of whom show up with false hope in their hearts and plenty of equally false identities. Even the proprietors have a few deceptions, chief among them is the part of the resort where they provide shelter for dying and horribly maimed soldiers. Still the atmosphere of this high-class convalescent home is that of great gentility that thinly disguises the seaminess of the guests' secret activities. Though much of the film is a quirky comedy, tragedy comes creeping in when people begin dying of unnatural causes, and not even the pure mountain air can save the owners and the residents.

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.

Louise, a young deaf and dumb comedian, has just been named best actress of the year. She is married to Yann, twenty years her senior. But their relationship is conflicting. It seems that Yann takes a malicious pleasure in psychologically torturing Louise. A whirlwind of uncertainties where dreams collide with nightmares, anguish, submission, sadism... Louise confides in Stephanie, her best friend, who advises her to flee. Louise refuses, convinced of a better future. One evening, while Yann tortures her once again, she kills him.

During the WW2, a Swiss mountain farmer, refuses to follow the government policy to increase self-sufficiency with produce. In his opinion, the steep mountain pastures are not suited for agriculture. Most of the villagers agree. However some begin to cultivate. Even after all his fellow farmers have given in and have started to plant cops, Tanner continues his opposition and ignores all letters and instructions. This leads to a series of reprimands, for instance, some of his hay is seized and his wife cannot buy at the local grocer's since the family won't comply with the government policy.

A woman learns to care for others when she's forced to help people on the wrong side of the law in this drama. Marie-Line (Muriel Robin) is a single woman in her mid-forties who oversees the cleaning crew at a large office building. On the job, Marie-Line is all business, with no patience for laziness and no tolerance for employees who do less than a perfect job. But Marie-Line's bosses are in the midst of a money crunch and they've cut back on her budget, so when several of her employees quit, she has to find new cleaners willing to work for a lower wage. Marie-Line soon finds new workers willing to work hard for low pay, but there's a catch -- most of them are illegal aliens, smuggled into France from Africa, Albania, or the Middle East, and when police begin asking questions about Marie-Line's new cleaners, she has to scramble to cover for them.

In an elegant apartment in Oslo, three pairs of friends gather for dinner on an early winter evening. It is a special occasion since the pandemic is over. Language: Norwegian sign language.

After many years in jail, Sonjas returns to her home village where she takes up her fight for custody of her 8-year old son Tim. But neither the authorities, nor her in-laws, nor Tims foster parents will ever consider handing over little Tim to Sonja, a purported spouse killer. Sonja must bring light into her dark past if she is to win back Tim's love. Tobias Ineichen's film is led by Melanie Winiger, one of Switzerland's brightest talents.

In winter, a landscape straight out of a fairy tale; in summer, still a region to refresh mind and soul – Rosegger's forest homeland. Deeply snow-covered forests, ptarmigan, snow hares, and majestic red deer in winter; refreshing streams, blossoming fruit trees, and shy fawns in spring; cooling giant trees, lush alpine meadows, and playful chamois kids in summer; otters and noble crayfish in crystal-clear trout streams, and a magnificent display of colors in autumn – all this Peter Rosegger described in his books. More than a hundred years have passed, but what has changed most since then is the people.

She grows up in a village, protected by a foster mother. Her fearlessness indicates early on that heroic blood is flowing in Lenya's young veins. When her village is raided and many of her friends are murdered, she makes it her business to seek vengeance and fight for justice.

Self-confessed body fetishist Nick hates fat people. He puts his heart and soul into his job as the manager of a fitness temple. The lavishly endowed Eva, on the other hand, is a pastry chef in a hotel on the roof of which Nick's studio is located. A body-swap comedy for which Diana Amft and Sebastian Ströbel don fatsuits.

Little Berthold Wettelsteck is an avid comic book reader and is particularly fond of the comic book hero Nick Knatterton's stories. Until the story suddenly becomes reality and he suddenly finds himself in it.

By accident, Mike gets the deal of his life. A rich managing director instructs him to seduce his unfaithful wife to give him a reason for divorce.

Policeman Simon Polt is on cloud nine. He finally has the village teacher Karin in his arms. But soon he's forced to look into the depths of humanity again: the priest's cook has been found dead. Was it the gourmet critic? The feisty woman had poured soup over his head the night before, in shock at the sight of an illustrious dinner party...

A comedy about aging, youth and other eternal truths. Of all days, precisely on her fiftieth birthday, Julia has to experience that age makes you invisible. Frustrated, she goes shopping and makes an acquaintance, spontaneously deciding to spend the evening with this stranger, rather than with the guests of her own birthday party. They wait for her in a restaurant, all dressed up and groomed, lively debating the years that have passed. The truths and wisdom of Julia's closest friends on aging and growing old are drowned increasingly in sufficient quantities of alcohol. In the mean time, on her eightieth birthday, Leonie, sulking over the loss of youth, is rebelling against her daughter, the senior citizen's home, conventions, and old age in general - and joyfully sabotaging the party in her honor.

Julien Bourges partly retraces the life of Alfredo Corrado, an American deaf artist. Today, considered an important figure in the French deaf community, Alfredo Corrrado came to Paris in the late 1970s, at a time when sign language was forbidden and scorned. This unique documentary on Alfredo Corrado recounts the creation of International Visual Theater (IVT) and the adventures of the first deaf theater in France at the Château de Vincennes, which changed the history of deaf people in France.

Diamonds are a girls best friends, so when an exhibition of the first diamonds ever discovered in Germany is announced, Lana thinks it is her duty to steal them. And so she does, since Lana is a diamond thief, a very good diamond thief. But the unexpected happens: she is caught by Tim because of a screw, the diamonds are fake and someone is trying to kill her. Will she survive?

The film creates a portrait of this major Swiss artist through an organic, poetic presentation of themes that dominated her life and her art: transformation, creative crisis, trust in the unconscious, her creative process, dualism, nature, the playful and the role of women.