
Acting
Johanna Schall
Born 1958-09-19 · Berlin, Germany
Acting credits
9.0Berlin in the 1930s - Adolf Hitler comes to power, communists and social democrats are persecuted, books are burned and Jewish citizens are ostracized. The outwardly shiny façade of Berlin, the capital of the Reich, reveals nothing of the unequal struggle of young people against the increasing oppression...
Die erste Reihe
1987
7.01942. The members of the Voß family, mother, two daughters, a daughter-in-law, and a son-in-law, are living in a house at the river. A fellow soldier of son Paul, who fights at the eastern front, delivers his greetings and an embroidered Russian blouse for Emmi, Paul′s wife. Daughter Agnes, whose husband is also fighting in the war, receives a fur vest from the junior partner who is stalking her. Obviously, the vest is also loot from the eastern front. When the family receives news that Emmi′s husband has been killed in action, the war finally enters the house at the river. Emmi commits suicide while Agnes′s husband returns as a cripple from the war front. At home, he has to learn what a price his wife had to pay for the "Russian fur".
The House on the River
1986
4.3Maja Wegner is in her late thirties and a single mother of a teenage daughter. To give her stale life a new direction, she decides to start all over again in the big city. She sells her house in the countryside, quits her job, and moves with her daughter to Berlin. There, she finds a job as a conductor for the railroad company. Although Maja soon finds new friends in her apartment building, the search for a new life partner does not come off so easily.
Cascade Backwards
1984
A railway line is to be laid through remote Lusatian farmland. Surveyors herald the “new era” with their work. The events also leave their mark on the people. Stylistically idiosyncratic first feature film by a director who comes from documentary film. The story is told as a parable about the relationship between humans and progress, with the actors making extremely clever use of their freedom.
Rublak – Die Legende vom vermessenen Land
1984
6.2Sunny is the singer of a band trying to establish itself in the East Berlin music scene. They play regular gigs in small towns, but Sunny feels out of touch with the audience and with her life as a whole. She begins a relationship with Ralph, an amateur saxophonist and philosophy student, who writes her a very personal song—but his obsession with death and unfaithful lifestyle are not for her. After getting into a quarrel with a band member who harasses her and telling off a show host, she is thrown out of the band. Abandoned, she struggles to regain control over her life.
Solo Sunny
1980
When East Germany ceases to be separate from its western half, one would think that things would be better for the couple in this movie who have been plagued by sexual and political harassment of the most virulent kind, but , they are completely unprepared to cope with the swift changes that are transforming their familiar yet desperately unhappy world. In the story, Heinz is a laborer in the cooperative apple orchards of an East German village and has married his sweetheart Lena. She works to take care of the sickly wife of the co-op's manager and also must cope with the sexual attentions of the perfidious man. One day, after discovering this state of affairs, Heinz blows up and assaults his wife's harasser, which only serves to land him in jail. While in prison, the state secret police (the Stasi) get him to help them entrap the co-op manager, whom they believe is going to try to defect.
Apple Trees
1992
4.7A story spanning three generations, from 1871 to 1945. When Gustav Wengler, a farmer’s son, returns from the Franco-German war in 1871, he goes to work for a precision mechanics and optical company, where he soon becomes a master craftsman. Wengler loyally promises the owner on his deathbed that his sons and grandsons will also stand by the company.
Wengler & Sons
1987
Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, former Stasi agents settle scores with former East German citizens who had resisted the regime.
Hüpf, Häschen, hüpf
1991
Aging Knights of the Round Table confront a fading realm as moral decay and disillusionment spread. King Arthur doubts the Grail quest; Gawain and Lancelot return unchanged or failed. Parzival, now a chronicler, refuses to revive past glories. Meanwhile Arthur’s heir Mordret rejects knighthood and the Grail’s existence…
Die Ritter der Tafelrunde
1990
6.0A teenager is found murdered, and the examining doctor recognizes her son's knife. The film works its way back to reveal how this situation came about; a rare treatment of the taboo subject of youth criminality in Socialist society.
Interrogating the Witnesses
1987
8.2Jessi finds the petrified talking heart of a pirate who died centuries ago. The pirate's dream image increasingly becomes a substitute for her father. When her father turns up one day, she has to decide between her childish hopes and her burgeoning adulthood...
Das Herz des Piraten
1988
9.0The Lübeck merchant Friedemann owes his crippled figure to a wet nurse "devoted to drink". He lives a secluded life with his three simple-minded sisters and his bedridden mother, loving only the theater and music. Only Gerda, the unhappy wife of the district commander of Rinnlingen, makes him blossom...
Der kleine Herr Friedemann
1991
5.9The young and rebellious Werther is passionately, but hopelessly, in love with Lotte. Although he knows that she is married to somebody who can offer her a secure future, Werther tries to be near her. Lotte cannot decide between these two men. She eventually rejects Werther, who does not survive her decision.
The Sorrows of Young Werther
1976
3.3Franz Xavier Stannebein, a young boy at the turn of the 20th century, wants to do nothing more than fly. He carries this dream through his years at an orphanage and into adulthood as a merchant in Spain. He eventually invests everything he has into building his own version of an airship. He later meets some industrialists in Germany who want to support his idea, and they ask him to build an airfield in Spain. When he sees the Nazis use the field during the Spanish Civil War, however, he feels betrayed and goes to Germany to protest. There he is thrown into an insane asylum in Leipzig. After WWII, his grandson and other survivors of the family searches for him, only to find the empty asylum... Based on the novel Das Luft-Schiff. Biografische Nachlasse zu den Fantasien meines Grossvaters (1974) by Fritz Rudolf Fries. The non-camera animation in the film was created by internationally known director Lutz Dammbeck.
The Airship
1983
6.3The opera singer Ludwig Löwenhaupt wants a proper festive roast for Christmas, so he buys a goose in advance to feed the whole family. What he doesn't realize, however, is that the children, Elli, Gerda and Peterle, will grow fond of the animal, which is christened Gustje, and will no longer want to eat it. After the "liberation", the "five kilos of meat", which were initially locked up in the cellar, become a pet that the children take to bed with them and communicate with. But shortly before Christmas, father Löwenhaupt still wants to slaughter them. However, as his family protests and his conscience gets in the way, he can't slaughter the goose after all. So Gustje only has to leave a few feathers as proof that she has been plucked, and the opera singer is given another goose that has already been cut up.
Die Weihnachtsgans Auguste
1988
No synopsis available yet.
Karate-Billi kehrt zurück
1993
6.0Christine inherits a sailboat from her father, whom she barely knew. Christine is a divorced single mother and her job at a research insitute leaves her with too much work and too little time to sail. She can't find anyone to buy the boat at full value, so she tries to repair it over the winter in the hopes of being able to get a better price in the spring. Working on the boat become something of an obsession to the detriment of Christine's relationships with her son, boyfriend and collegues. When the boat is finally ready to sell, she isn't sure that she is willing to part with it after all.
The Solo Sailor
1987
6.0A group of young people draws straws to see who'll steal some cigarettes. With this theft, Sebastian starts a bizarre, symbolic odyssey through a sclerotic world, in search of himself and of truth and justice. When he tries withdrawing from one social paradigm, he finds himself caught in another.
Miraculi
1992
4.2Johanna is a dedicated female scientist in a near-future world. Her research team develops a drug called "Petersein masculinum 199," capable of transforming a woman into a man. Driven by scientific curiosity and an unrequited love for her cold project leader, Professor Peters, Johanna volunteers as the first human test subject.The chemical process succeeds, and she becomes a man named Johann Anders. However, the physical triumph quickly turns into a psychological crisis. As Johann, she experiences the world from a male perspective and is shocked by what she finds. The men around her live in a world of emotional detachment, power struggles, and casual sexism.When Johann sees how the Professor emotionally mistreats his own daughter, the illusion shatters. Horrified by the lack of empathy required to thrive in this patriarchal society, Johann ends the experiment on day 29. She chooses to change back into a woman, rejecting the toxic male world.
Selbstversuch
1990
No synopsis available yet.
Diktatur des Gewissens
1990
No synopsis available yet.
Kelly Bastian - Geschichte einer Hoffnung
2001
No synopsis available yet.
Haus Herzenstod
1992
No synopsis available yet.
Kikeriki
1989
8.0For five years Rogelio, a Chilean exile, has been in the GDR, where he works as a lighting technician at a theater. Though his colleagues try to make him feel welcome, he feels lonely and isolated.
Blond Tango
1986