Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung

A 9th century woman of English extraction born in the German city of Ingelheim disguises herself as a man and rises through the Vatican ranks.

Cairo, 2011. A police officer investigates the murder of a woman in a luxurious hotel in the days leading up to the Egyptian revolution.

Insurance broker Max's life is about one thing - keeping his walnut brain tumour in check. He eats properly, exercises and lives properly, but all of this self-consciousness makes him more and more depressed. When he realises that his beloved wife plans to leave him, he decides to take his own life.

An Hungarian youth comes of age at Buchenwald during World War II. György Köves is 14, the son of a merchant who's sent to a forced labor camp. After his father's departure, György gets a job at a brickyard; his bus is stopped and its Jewish occupants sent to camps. There, György find camaraderie, suffering, cruelty, illness, and death. He hears advice on preserving one's dignity and self-esteem. He discovers hatred. If he does survive and returns to Budapest, what will he find? What is natural; what is it to be a Jew? Sepia, black and white, and color alternate to shade the mood.

In a village on the Hungarian border, two young brothers grow up during war time with their cruel grandmother and must learn every trick of evil to survive in the absurd world of adults.

When Daantje was a withdrawn child, her mother told him that somewhere there was a girl waiting for him who danced beautifully. As an adult, Daantje is a lonely homeless person who happens to meet the former ballerina, Natasha. At first, the woman does not pay much attention to Daantje – the young man is a bit strange. Besides, Natasha has emotional hardships in her relationships. Then an event occurs that makes her want to return to her homeland immediately. Daantje goes with her.

Alone and angry, a teenager travels to the coast of northern Italy to meet her biological father. On the beaches of Emilia-Romagna’s Riviera, deserted in winter, the girl meets him for the first time. Their encounter is fraught with questions, longing and conflict, as they struggle for acceptance, love, and honesty. It’s a difficult and complicated reckoning between the choices of the past and its repercussions on the present.

Leipzig, December 1734: Christmas brings the Bach family together. The first snow has fallen and the children Gottfried and Elisabeth are delighted about the arrival of their older brothers Friedemann and Emanuel. The Thomaskantor has retired to his music room. Anna Magdalena supports her husband, as there are only a few days left and his latest work, the six-part "Christmas Oratorio", must be finished on time. It is awaited with suspicion by the city council and the gentlemen of the consistory, who have long found Bach's waywardness a thorn in their side and fear that, after the premiere of the St. Matthew Passion a few years earlier, the St. Thomas Church will once again be filled with "operatic" music. With the oratorio, Johann Sebastian Bach hopes that he will finally become court composer in Dresden. And, as always, he demands that all members of the family join forces to help him. But differences of opinion are increasingly delaying the completion of Bach's most famous work.

This 2004 documentary by Werner Herzog diaries the struggle of a passionate English inventor to design and test a unique airship during its maiden flight above the jungle canopy.

In the city of Jaffa; a young girl plans to run away with her secret lover, when a tragedy forever changes the course of their lives. Jaffa is a mixed Arabic - Jewish seaside city near Tel Aviv, where Reuven Wolf (Moni Moshonov) has a garage for repairing cars. His wife Ossi (Ronit Elkabetz), a vain, self-centered woman, just makes everybody's life difficult. The couple's daughter, Mali Wolf (Dana Ivgy), has secretly fallen in love with her childhood friend, the young Toufik (newcomer Mahmud Shalaby), a hard-working youth who has come as a helping hand to his Israeli-Arab father Hassan, a long-time mechanic working for Reuven.

An ongoing experiment, evolving from a biopic about Soviet physicist Lev Landau into a large scale project – part cinematic cycle, part behavioral experiment – involving hundreds of participants from around the world. Combining elements of film, theatre, science, psychology, architecture, visual arts and performance, it has created a complex and absorbing world that has to be lived as much as seen.

Ursus is a story of three outcasts—Georgian unemployed film director, Ukrainian ex-stuntman and a Canadian female fighter for the wild animals' rights—making their desperate journey from Tbilisi, the capital of ex-Soviet Georgia plunged into a civil war, to Berlin at the beginning of 1992. Each of the three characters pursues their own goal without even knowing how much their fates are intertwined.

It's mom's birthday and her three daughters want to throw a big party. But everything turns out differently. It's not just because the divorced dad arrives a few days early and brings his much-too-young new girlfriend with him, or because the birthday girl has to stage the end of the world with her village theater group.

Modern version of The Frog King. Out of an impulse, 15-year-old Anna kisses a frog which then turns into a prince. But the curse is not solved that easily.

In the Andes, a Belgian doctor and his photojournalist wife become ensnared in a native tribe's struggle with a mining company.

It is a story about the Soviet worker Pyotr and the German engineer Hans, who came to the USSR before the war on a business trip. At a Soviet plant the German team works in cooperation with Russian specialists. Once Hans makes a mistake which causes the explosion of the furnace and human losses. Hans finds himself at the mercy of Pyotr, the only witness to his actions near the furnace. Pyotr also depends on Hans, because Pyotr’s very presence near the furnace entails accusation of subversive actions and a death sentence. Mutual suspicion gives way to silent sympathy and later friendship. They even look like each other, both have small children. Pyotr secretly leaves the town with his family but Hans feels loss rather that relief at the disappearance of the embarrassing witness.

Emeryka loses control of her life through the intrigue of a mysterious character named The Something and is led to an adventurous escape to a female sect, for which she has to leave her daughter behind. It is a story about the right to choose how each person defines themselves in terms of gender and sexuality.

Eleven-year-old Linh shows great grace under pressure. When her mother, who’s raising her kids on her own, has to return unexpectedly to Vietnam, Linh looks after her little sister Tien and the family restaurant on her own. Of course, no one is supposed to find out, not the school, not the neighbours, and definitely not child protective services. But Linh’s biggest problem has red hair, a telescope and a sly grin: Pauline. The daredevil from across the street has the whole neighbourhood under surveillance and can’t imagine anything cooler than a life without parents. When Pauline blackmails the Vietnamese sisters into starting a gang with her, the three girls set off on a daring adventure.

Two families dispute a land with a land dealer.

In this docudrama Rosa von Praunheim looks into Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s sexual orientation, especially into his erotic experiences during his travels in Italy. Contrary to the common belief, von Praunheim argues that Goethe was not a heartbreaker and conqueror after all. It was only in Italy, that he had diverse sexual experiences, not least with men. Von Praunheim bases his assumption on letters written by Goethe to his friend Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi about these sexual encounters. Some of the content of these letters is re-encated in the film. At the same time, historians and linguists analyse and classify the letters into their historical context.