The Hunger Years: In a Land of Plenty

Diederich Heßling is scared of everything and everyone. But as he grows up, he comes to realize that he has to offer his services to the powers-that-be if he wants to wield power himself. His life motto now runs: bow to those at the top and tread on those below. In this way, he always succeeds: as a student in a duel-fighting student fraternity and as a businessman in a paper factory. He cajoles the obese district administrative president Von Wulkow and wins his favor. He slanders his financial rivals and hatches a plot with the social democrats in the town council. On his honeymoon with his rich wife Guste, he finally finds a chance to do his beloved Kaiser a favor. And when a memorial to the Kaiser is unveiled in the town where Diederich lives and works, he delivers the address. He stands behind the lectern in the pouring rain, saluting his Kaiser. The crowd is dispersed. Everything is laid in ruins...

A bunch of delinquent women are shipped to an island prison run by the sadistic warden Carla. Forced into situations of sexual perversion and violence and torture, the prisoners band together to try to overthrow Carla and escape the island.

When Edith Howland's husband abandons her for a younger woman, leaving her with their alcoholic son and his senile uncle, she begins recording details of an imaginary, much more successful life where she has friends and grandchildren. However, this diversion soon grows unhealthy when she becomes slowly convinced that the fantasies are real.

In May of 1983, a man turns 49 and, with his 17-year old son, journeys to the village in Baden that he left 40 years before. He wants to discover what happened then, the truth about an affair his mother had with a young Polish prisoner of war, how the authorities came to learn of it, the lovers' arrest, and the aftermath. While his son takes Polaroid photographs, he retraces the steps of his childhood and interviews those who should remember. The story is disclosed in flashbacks that focus on the lovers (Paulina and Stanislaus), on a jealous and conniving neighbor, and on Mayer, the local SS commander who wants to find a way out of inevitable consequences.

Johanna has fled Nazi Germany to visit a friend in Finland, and from there she continues on to her friend's family's estate. Once at the estate, Johanna passionately argues with her friend's pro-Nazi brother and at the same time, falls for the second, good-looking brother who shares her own anti-fascist feelings. The two are soon engaged in an active sexual relationship that continues as they travel north to an Arctic port.

A woman reflects on her romantic relationship with a young Moroccan years ago. Her daughter travels to Morocco, attempting to relive her mother's past.

In the winter of 1942-43, a Jewish family leaps from a train going through Silesia. They are separated in the woods, and Leon, a local peasant who's now a farmer of some wealth, discovers the woman, Rosa, and hides her in his cellar. Leon's a middle-aged Catholic bachelor, tormented by his sexual drive. He doesn't tell Rosa he's seen signs her husband is alive, and he begs her to love him. Rosa offers herself to Leon if he'll help a local Jew in hiding who needs money. Leon pays, and love between Rosa and him does develop, but then Leon's peasant subservience and his limited empathy lead to tragedy. At the war's end, a ray of sunshine comes from an unexpected place.

A West German man, mistaken by the police for a left wing terrorist, hides in Vienna with a prostitute and her incestuous teen daughter. They become both a threesome and a happy surrogate family, but nothing lasts forever.

A young married couple - both of them actors - work in the divided city of Berlin. Agnes, the young woman, is on location in East Berlin, and Jochen, her husband, works at the Westend Theater in West Berlin. This young marriage is in danger of breaking up as they vehemently defend their diametrically opposed views. The way they see politics, art and the world differs extremely.

This feature film describes the labor dispute of a piecework crew in a large German industrial company and its workforce against the background of the "September strikes" in Germany.

Comedy drama about one of life's perennial losers who finally strikes it lucky with a beautiful woman, but not before experiencing the usual seemingly endless pitfalls.

The unemployed machinist Alfred "Scheff" Schefczyk moves from Württemberg to West Berlin full of hope, where he finds a job as a transporter. There, however, he despairs at the seemingly insurmountable dependency structures and the lack of solidarity among his fellow sufferers. The rent in the workers' hostel is raised disproportionately, but nobody wants to mess things up with the landlord or janitor. At work, piecework hours are tightened, but nobody wants to go on strike, and when they do, they are quickly crushed by the management's tactics. When Scheff tries to mobilize against the dismissal of one of the delegates, he finds only one worker willing to sign. "Dear mother, I'm fine," he nevertheless writes on a postcard.

The budding sexual urges of young women cause themselves and others trouble.

Erich Bauermann is a smart, young, good-looking guy (he thinks). His life becomes troublesome, when he first meets a very unusual woman and an even more unusual bank robber.

An antique bed relates passionate stories about various people who have made love on it throughout the decades of the 20th century. Said folks include a sweet young virgin, a sly prostitute who helps a jilted woman get revenge on her unfaithful husband, a German soldier fighting in World War II who's on leave for two hours, and a carefree modern couple.

Only a few steps are needed for the Little Prince to circumnavigate his planet. As small as his world is, the treasure hidden within it is all the greater: a single rose, to which the Prince feels his unconditional love. When she sends him away one day, the Little Prince embarks on a journey that takes him to strange planets with headstrong inhabitants and finally lands him on Earth, where, with a mixture of naiveté and wisdom, he wins the hearts of all those he encounters.

Citizens of East Germany talk about their experiences and feelings in the face of upcoming elections that will lead to reunification with the West. The past is tinged with regret, frustration and anger, while the future is uncertain.

Young men from a car repair shop in Loch Ness, northern Scotland, use a sea monster imitation to rescue castle residents from murder attacks. This allows them the "real" Nessie - Monster into the enclosure. A simple-minded mixture of crime thriller, slapstick and action for simple demands.

Engineer Franz Bach seems to have gone astray once again. Working overtime, nagging at his wife and his parents sleeping apart lead the children to come to this conclusion. It can't go on like this. His youngest son Täve does his best to keep his father away from the very young intern Irene. Täve's 19-year-old brother, on the other hand, tries to steal his father's mistress. His wife Margarete also wants to bring a breath of fresh air into the marriage.

France at the time of the Restoration. The young country gentleman Rastignac comes to Paris to study. He takes up residence in a poor boarding house, where his father Goriot, who has been excluded by his daughters, also lives. The penniless Rastignac is anxious to gain a foothold in Parisian society. His cousin advises him to take the rich banker's wife Delphine, one of Goriot's daughters, as his mistress, which he does. At the same time, however, he falls in love with the laundress Yvette. He is unable to make up his mind when boarding house guest Vautrin suggests a third option: To marry Victorine, the disinherited daughter of a millionaire, and kill her brother in a duel in order to get his inheritance after all. Rastignac agrees. This is his downfall. Instead of high society, he ends up in the gutter.

The captain of a ship of the merchant navy is always on the move because of his job – and has a different girlfriend in every harbour. But his friends think that he should change his way of life. Thus, they take the lovely reporter Eva on board for a trip to Leningrad. But at first, Eva′s presence causes a lot of upheaval on board.