The Dragon Daniel

A TV special about the christmas celebrations of the most popular TV characters in the ZDF at that time.

Caroline and Tobias have a lot of fantasies. But one day everything they tell suddenly become true.

Henriette is a princess; she is playing with her ball, but drops it into a well. A talking frog replaces it with a golden ball, on condition that he can eat and drink with her, and rest in her bed. She accepts, but then is repelled at the thought of the frog eating and drinking with her, etc., but her Father makes her do so. In her bedroom, the frog turns into a handsome prince, and she falls in love with him, but he leaves immediately because of her broken promises. She pines and eventually seeks him out, braving various tests of her truthfulness in the process.

Ten-year-old Ole is full of mischief. He attempts to fly and is hospitalized with a broken leg. When he sees a Sherlock Holmes movie on TV, however, he forgets about the pains and comes up with a new plan. Disguised as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, he and his friend Andreas start searching for criminals. Soon, the two boys detect their first case. On the street they meet a man wearing a stuck-on beard. The hobby detectives find this very suspicious and decide to follow him.

The little African girl Asina is eagerly waiting for her new friend Karli. Karli is a young sailor from Rostock who has promised her a gift on his next arrival in Coccatuttibana. Karli keeps his promise and smuggles a stowaway onboard the “MS Wismar”. Kasimir, a snowman, finds shelter in a cooling chamber. Although the journey turns out to be turbulent, Karli and Kasimir manage to arrive in Africa in good health.

Twelve-year-old Joochen lives in a village on the Elbe. He finds a shot beaver and takes it to school with him. The animals are a protected species and he wants the culprit to be found. He also wants to impress the others a little, especially the girl Corina. However, his discovery is met with disinterest and he goes off on his own in search of the culprit. In the process, he makes friends with the hunter "Eule", his future brother-in-law. Joochen finds out that "Eule" has shot the beaver, turns away from him in disgust and reports him to the police. His stubborn behavior does not meet with the approval of the others, because "Owl" did not kill the beaver on purpose. Despite his dislike, Joochen suggests "Owl" as a chaperone for the school trip, but doesn't want to go himself. At the last minute, he decides to go after all and reconcile with "Owl".

German artist Kurt Barnert has escaped East Germany and now lives in West Germany, but is tormented by his childhood under the Nazis and the GDR regime.

A stage actor's turn as GDR leader Erich Honecker inspires an outlandish scheme to keep his daughter safe during the Leipzig protests of 1989.

It is the late 1950s. Flourishing under the economic miracle, Germany grows increasingly apathetic about confronting the horrors of its recent past. Nevertheless, Fritz Bauer doggedly devotes his energies to bringing the Third Reich to justice. One day Bauer receives a letter from Argentina, written by a man who is certain that his daughter is dating the son of Adolph Eichmann. Excited by the promising lead, and mistrustful of a corrupt judiciary system where Nazis still lurk, Bauer journeys to Jerusalem to seek alliance with Mossad, the Israeli secret service. To do so is treason — yet committing treason is the only way Bauer can serve his country.

East Berlin, early 1980s: Ludger is hired by the Stasi to spy on the oppositional arts scene in Prenzlauer Berg. But when he falls in love with the mysterious Nathalie, he has to choose between a life as a celebrated underground poet and his career as a Stasi agent. A choice that will turn back on him 30 years later.

While Kurdish gigolo Baran dreams of a future in Europe, German pilot Marion is struggling to come to terms with her cancer diagnosis. When the two meet at the Turkish holiday resort of Marmaris, they engage in a kind of double-cross and decide to enter into a sham marriage. After a promising beginning, a shared future seems well within their reach. But things turn out not to be quite as simple as that.

Jenny is hit in the head by a soccer ball. When she comes to, the clock has turned back exactly 32 years! It is June 21, 1974, the year of the football World Cup, one day before the football match between the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR. Jenny experiences two turbulent days at the side of her future parents - in both parts of Germany.

Whereas the marriage of Maja and Uwe Rath bobs along in a boring routine, daughter Alina is freshly in love with Nico. And because the young couple are serious about each other, the parents must become acquainted. That the Ohnsorg family lives in a proper castle on the outskirts of Berlin is only a problem for Uwe because Maja is facing an entirely different one: Papa Ohnsorg turns out to be her secret lover Stefan. Neither of them is letting on anything and they are glad when the good-byes are finally approaching. However, Uwe’s broken down car bestows the Ohnsorg and the Rath family with a weekend together, during which more than one bomb will be dropped.

A few small town cops are resorting to unusual means to keep their police station from being closed.

Nama, a teenager from Mali, has crossed desert and sea for his freedom. When Nama is injured in a fight, an old man named Willi lets him move into the house that he used to share with his son Stefan. The father and son have not spoken for years and the three men may have little in common, yet what binds them together is their search for a home where their wounds from present and past can heal.

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.

Germany 1982: The country is divided into two parts. Nele, coming from West-Germany, travels to East-Germany where she meets Captain, singer of a band. They fall in love with each other, but the regime "takes care" of their relationship, meaning: They can not see each other again. Germany 1990: The country is reunited. Nele starts searching their lost love...

In East Berlin in the late 70s, two boys meet one evening in a disco: Thomas, who is from a working class family and is doing an apprenticeship, and Michael, a 16-year-old school pupil from an educated middle-class family. They both miss the tram home and walk together instead, ending up at Michael’s house where they discuss God and the world into the early hours. Following this encounter the two boys enter into an unusual friendship, united by their mutual desire to get away from the phoniness, the limitations and the restrictions of their parents and of society.

On a business trip, Eva meets 21-year-old Tom. After a one-night stand, Eva would like to leave her with this "slip-up". But Tom fascinates her too much, and so the successful scientist lets herself into an affair with him. While for Tom neither age difference nor any conventions are an issue, Eva remains doubtful.

The life of Alexander von Humboldt up to his attempt to climb the Chimborazo in 1802.

1942. The members of the Voß family, mother, two daughters, a daughter-in-law, and a son-in-law, are living in a house at the river. A fellow soldier of son Paul, who fights at the eastern front, delivers his greetings and an embroidered Russian blouse for Emmi, Paul′s wife. Daughter Agnes, whose husband is also fighting in the war, receives a fur vest from the junior partner who is stalking her. Obviously, the vest is also loot from the eastern front. When the family receives news that Emmi′s husband has been killed in action, the war finally enters the house at the river. Emmi commits suicide while Agnes′s husband returns as a cripple from the war front. At home, he has to learn what a price his wife had to pay for the "Russian fur".

Between 1817 and 1821, Berlin's court theater director Count Brühl has been fighting desperately for years for a German theater, for German opera. He knows that the man who could do it lives in Dresden: Carl Maria von Weber. Brühl could win him over as Kapellmeister for Berlin, but the king prefers Gasparo...

Melanie is in her mid-thirties and works for the Brandenburg police. Her precinct is the province north of Berlin. Melanie likes it when anybody likes her. If it gets political, she keeps herself out. But that's no longer so easy when her best friend Lydia, an ex-daily soap star, makes herself important as a populist influencer with right-wing slogans in her home village and a street disappears overnight. Its bumpy cobblestones were the last evidence of a dark time when building material for the Wehrmacht was mined at the Kiessee, today a bathing area. Forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners toiled here. Elementary school teacher Anja considers it a thoughtless mess that this stone memorial to history should simply be asphalted. With brown homeland paroles, Lydia heats up the mood in the village and earns good money through clicks on the Internet. When the violence escalates, law enforcement officer Melanie, who is addicted to harmony, has to decide which side she is on.

For years, Martin has been working on his great play about cloud castles, flying pirates and a feisty princess. His secret role model for the leading character is his good friend Isabel, a cheeky young woman who is waging war on genetically modified seeds around the world. And she is leaving tomorrow to go to the middle of Africa for the next three years.

Otto is turning 65 and a big celebration with relatives and friends is coming up. What does life bring? A comfortable retirement, looking after his beloved grandchildren, lamenting the aches and pains of old age. None of that. Otto falls in love with Klara and the two of them are looking for a place to live together. What is in itself a matter of course comes up against many barriers. A turbulent time begins for the two newly in love...

Alexander sits in the pub and wants to be left alone. The fake sailor Konstantin sits in the pub because he can't leave his fellow men alone. That evening, however, he has his sights set on Alexander and won't let up until he reluctantly tells him about his accident at work. After the accident, he is only good for desk jobs, which leaves the once perfectly healthy construction worker struggling with his fate. Unasked and uninvited, Konstantin provides the embittered Alexander with more than enough work by declaring him responsible for a long overdue road construction project in the municipality. The old man takes not only Alexander by surprise, but also the mayor. He had put off planning the project for far too long. Understandably, neither of them are thrilled, but now that things have got rolling, they have to act...

A village has to be destroyed for coal mining. Henning, a 15 years old boy, who wants to visit his grandfather one more time, realizes that nothing will be the way it used to be.

17-year-old Guido suffers since his early childhood from neurodermatitis. After being taken to the hospital due to a heavy attack, he starts to question his personal and familiar environment and discovers that his parents’ relationship – which he assumed to be happy and sound – is built on lies. Unable to deal with this disappointment, he flees from it and moves in with his older brother and his roommates...

"Je oller, je doller", say the roommates of pensioner Otto Panke, because they often see him together with the young Manuela, who likes to invent "dream jobs" for her life and dreams of an "exclusive life". But for Otto, the noticeable sympathy for the pretty, quite professional woman is simply "soul kinship". And since both have an extremely large degree of imagination, they are special, extraordinary - to a certain extent "spider fix"! The problem of the two is that they often get into tricky situations that threaten to get messy and they get a lot of problems. But as is the case with good stories: in the end, everything aims at a happy happy end...

In 1896 the Berlin noble doctor Dr. Wilhelm Holtfreter takes over his well-to-do wife Mathilde and takes over the country doctor's office in the Prussian district of Westprignitz from the late Dr. Tochtenhagen. His decision was met with incomprehension everywhere.

Eva Jensen is a female carpenter form Hamburg who wants to make a new start on the Baltic Sea coast in eastern Germany. She tries to buy a workshop with a view of the sea offered for sale by Heide, who rents out beach chairs. Unfortunately, Heide’s ex-husband vetoes the sale. In trying to understand his reasons, Eva comes across a painful family secret from the days of the GDR. And in other respects too, the newcomer from the West faces prejudice in the village, although her skills are urgently needed. Fish-seller Christian is also interested in the workshop, which Eva just sees as fair competition. Then they discover a common passion, kite-surfing, and unexpectedly grow closer.