Engineer Paul Holland returns from a trip. His girlfriend Sybille has disappeared from their apartment without leaving a note. He searches for her and finds himself in the middle of a manhunt for an international drug ring.
Inge works in a department store as a saleswoman in the women's fashion department. She suffers from the cramped conditions in her parents' house, where they save money because her choleric father, a miner, dreams of owning his own house in the country. She despises life in the Ruhr area where the...
The mechanic Behnke wants to join the Nazi party to secure a good living. However, after his Jewish neighbors have been taken away, he changes his views. Trying to remain "a non-political man," he withdraws from reality and becomes a Nazis laborer.
Klaus is a young man in post-war Berlin. He is drawn to his friend Manfred and, under the encouragement of their acquaintance, Dr. Winkler, explore the underground world of gay clubs and electronic music. His family begins to learn of his other life and do everything they can to set him straight.
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 story about the continuity and collapse of history, the power of suppression, and the terror of reconciliation; loyalty, treason and revenge. In a brave cinematic game, Heinrich Böll’s story Billiards at Half-Past Nine is split up into cracks, blocks, breaks and sudden turns, as the life story...
Three 1950s city stories: In Hamburg, Sergeant Siegel tackles St. Pauli’s crime, from prostitution to deadly domestic fights. In Munich, teenager Helga Barufka teeters on the edge of nightlife’s dangers. In Düsseldorf, escort “Fräulein Doktor” outsmarts her boss by poaching his VIP...
The teacher Dorothee Durand, young and single, travels from England to the picturesque south of France to find the remaining remnants of her family. Her search takes her to Nimes, where she meets the likewise single Marius, a hotelier, who immediately falls in love with the beautiful woman. And so...
Retired tax official Willi Winzig spends his retirement happily and contentedly in his home. However, this changes when his sister Heidelinde, her daughter and his father want to move in with him, and as Willi is a good-natured man, he takes them in, but because they have no money and his pension...
For the corpulent nobleman Sir John Falstaff, the inn in the small English town of Windsor is the best of all places. Here he can indulge in excessive dining and intemperate drinking, as well as swagger and boast about his adventures, particularly those of an amorous nature. At present, he has...
Pippi prepares for Christmas. She bakes a huge number of gingerbread biscuits. In the big tree outside her house she has hung lots of Christmas presents. At Christmas Eve she sits at her window, looking out in the darkness at all the presents hanging in the tree. She feels lonely and thinks with...
The countess is married, and the ghosts are still in the Spessart. Her husband becomes an astronaut and the story involved time travelling and space travelling starts.
The girl Marianne inherited a motorboat called “Eintracht” from her parents and struggled to get her to drive it with her uncle. There is a row with the new engineer Michel the evening after the first trip. He leaves - out of jealousy. Instead of him, Marianne takes three funny musicians with...
