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© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 44 movies from Das kleine Fernsehspiel
Four adolescent girls each spend their youth in the same farmhouse over the last century. Though separated by decades, resonances between their lives emerge: their desires and distress, secrets and truths, encounters with another’s gaze and defiant gaze in return.
Aug 2025
An aging poet finds purpose mentoring Yurlady, a talented teen, though exposing her to the poetry scene might be unwise. His own poetic pursuits led nowhere, leaving him a stereotypical obscure writer.
Mar is ready to leave the tiny island of Malta behind, and her estranged mother's death gives her the perfect way out: an inheritance of valuable farmland that she can sell. But when greedy relatives contest her claim, Mar's plans hit a snag. As she fights to secure her future, Mar meets Nenu, a spirited troubadour whose vibrant folk songs, rooted in Malta's ancient għana tradition, awaken emotions she's long buried.
Apr 2026
Julia and Tobias discover that their daughter Marielle has suddenly developed telepathic abilities and can see and hear everything they do. This leads to situations ranging from the awkward to the absurd as uncomfortable truths are revealed.
Apr 2025
Spending every evening in a new and mysterious stranger’s bed, capricious transient Nore agrees to move into a spare room eagerly offered to her by Jonna, a reserved medical student. Against the odds, this unlikely pair finds solace in each other and fall into an intoxicating pattern of partying hard at night with the local men vying for their attention. As their relationship intensifies, Nore’s troubled past comes to light and threatens to dismantle the blissfully ignorant, inexplicably jubilant lifestyle they’ve built together in this “candy-colored, flamboyant and deeply personal film.” (Variety)
Jan 2026
Struggling to keep their family together, Lou helps her broke artist father fake his own death to boost the value of his work. But as the lie of cat litter ashes grows, she realises that letting go might be the only way forward.
Aug 2026
In their feature-length debut, Gossing/Sieckmann dive into the merfolk subculture with performance artist and siren Una. Genre elements, fiction and documentary, self-care, political activism and self-chosen identities blend into one another.
Feb 2025
Nothing could be further from the mind of young, rebellious Romani woman Valentina than getting married. But when her beloved sister Jasmina moves to Germany with her husband Robby and her family in Macedonia finds itself in dire straits, marriage seems to be the only way out. In her desperation, Valentina snatches up a long-time admirer – but on her wedding night, she is unable to consummate the marriage.
Oct 2021
While Germany in 1834 is simmering in every corner, the resistance led by Georg Büchner is working on the revolution. Heinrich Furrer secretly prints Büchner‘s revolutionary leaflet “Der Hessische Landbote“ in his brother Gustav‘s printing House, thus supporting the revolutionaries. Heinrich loves Minna. She wants to go to America!… and he‘s supposed to come with her. Everything could be so simple if Heinrich weren‘t living with Agnes, a former prostitute, if he had the necessary money and Minna wasn‘t married to his brother Gustav.
Jan 2027
Sixteen-year-old Ilay drifts through the summer on the outskirts of Berlin while a palliative nurse accompanies his ailing mother during her last days.
2021. When 22-year-old Vitaly leaves his mother Tetyana and his beloved sister Eugenia behind in Ukraine, he dreams of starting a new life in Munich, Germany. Struggling to find where he belongs in a foreign country, he eventually joins a student theater group. Everything changes with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as Eugenia and Tetyana are forced to flee. Overnight, two harsh realities land on Vitaly’s doorstep: the global political situation and his own family conflicts.
Oct 2026
Four young people from Berlin decide to spend their summer in Portugal. They throw away their smart phones, open up their relationships and try to free themselves from any social norms. But just as their utopia comes true, a devastating forest fire breaks out around them.
May 2026
Jan 2001
Heike works at a cleaning company, where every day she has to handle her team’s struggles, the pressure of delivering a spotless job, and the need to keep clients and boss happy. When a powerful subcontractor threatens to withdraw his support if she does not provide more work for his team, Heike faces a difficult choice. To comply, she must sacrifice one of her own employees. As the pressure closes in, Heike must decide how far she is willing to go to meet the job’s ruthless demands.
Jun 2026
Theresa is trying to save her academic career: a field study at a soccer field, conducted among a recreational soccer team, is intended to explore everyday sexism and the potential for empowerment in this male-dominated environment. But Theresa soon finds herself wondering whether she still maintains the necessary scientific distance from her research subjects—and whether soccer isn’t, after all, more important to her than her academic career.
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In a cotton-farming village in Sudan, teenage Nafisa is raised on heroic tales of battling British colonizers told by her grandmother, the village matriarch Al-Sit. But when a young businessman arrives from abroad with a new development plan and genetically engineered cotton, Nafisa becomes the center of a power play to determine the future of the village. Awakening to her own strength, Nafisa sets out to save the cotton fields – and herself. Neither she nor her community will ever be the same again.
Chronicle of a Disappearance unfolds in a series of seemingly unconnected cinematic tableaux, each of them focused on incidents or characters which seldom reappear later in the film. Among the many unrelated scenes, there is a Palestinian actress struggling to find an apartment in West Jerusalem, the owner of the Holy Land souvenir shop preparing merchandise for incoming Japanese tourists, a group of old women gossiping about their relatives, and an Israeli police van which screeches to a halt so several heavily armed soldiers can get off the car and urinate.
Sep 1996
Today, Mel (34) belongs to the winners in life, but that wasn’t always the case. The thought of her own past so upsets the self-made millionaire’s that she summarily buys the large panel systems-building where she grew up. She would like to come to terms with her history, but the past is a stubborn beast.
Oct 2024
While handing out food at a charity organization, Laura, Evîn and Julia unexpectedly cross paths. Laura, a released prisoner, defends Evîn, a Kurdish woman, when she is racially insulted by a man waiting in line. Eventually the situation gets out of hand.
Feb 2026
A film shoot takes a dark turn when the burning of a Quran throws the crew into turmoil. Caught in accusations, intern Elif is drawn into a dangerous game of secrets and lies, finding herself at the heart of an all-absorbing conspiracy.
May 2025