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© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 33 movies from Das kleine Fernsehspiel
Two childhood friends reconnect in their twenties: one was once the irresistible beauty of the schoolyard; the other was the shy, kind shadow. On a whim, they decide to move in together, and what begins as an impulsive decision soon turns into a luminous adventure of love, desire and discovery. Nights blur into mornings, laughter into intimacy, and new romances unfold with all the excitement of newly found freedom. However, this joyous and spicy celebration of friendship and desire gradually reveals deeper scars, as echoes of a hidden trauma resurface and shift the meaning of every sexual and romantic encounter.
Jan 2026
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
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
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
Middle-aged and erratic, Oscar is a failed writer who has given up on life. Unemployed and living with family, he wanders the streets of Medellín in a drunken stupor, lamenting the state of literature in his home country, where he has succumbed to the cliché of the tortured artist. However, the opportunity to mentor a young student offers a chance at redemption, if he doesn’t screw it up first.
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
Katharina, Ricky, Victoria and Malou live in an assisted living group. There they have built up an anarchic utopia as an alternative to everything they reject: Parents, school, rules. With social worker Ballack as a half-hearted guardian, things go well until their “live and let live” agreement starts to falter.
Oct 2025
Fifteen-year-old Gabo seems like a regular teenager who goes to school, plays video games with his best friend, and does other things a normal teenager would do – except he’s not. He has tendencies he knows to be wrong, but cannot control. He befriends Dave, a much older man with his fantasies. Lines soon start to blur between a trusting friendship and being groomed. Once Dave is arrested on suspicion of statutory rape, Gabo must suddenly decide whether to testify against his mentor with the risk of exposing his secret.
Nov 2024
Alexander spends christmas with his mother but this year he gets a new perspective on the traditions.
May 1978
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
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.
David is a raw vegan influencer. In addition to spreading supplements, he also shares stories about dark forces and God. The film delves into a complex world between conspiracy ideologies and self-optimization, portraying people who want to establish a kingdom in Germany.
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
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
Jan 2001
Vincent, a 36-year-old employee of an art gallery in Manhattan, has an affair with a young girl. The girl sells him a painting of a girl with a severed head and a large, headless falcon. Both the painting and the girl attract Vincent in a way that first excites and then repels him.
Jan 1971
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.
Feb 2026
As Tobias, a young director, supposes that his girl-friend Ellen had an affair with his brother Markus, front man of "Hansen", one year ago, he decides to shoot a documentary about the band's next tour. When Ellen joins the project, everybody's emotions boil over, although they are observed all the time.
Oct 2005
A middle-aged fisherman living with his wife and daughter on Greece’s northern border, who is drowning in debt, starts to smuggle migrants across the border lake, in exchange for a hefty fee. Until a tragic incident strikes the family, pushing the three heroes to face their own personal impasses and weaknesses.
Jan 2023
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.
Apr 2026