Christian Kuchenbuch

Thomas Brasch was born as a German-Jewish emigrant in England in order to move to the young GDR with his family at the beginning of the 1950s. His father Horst is primarily interested in helping to build the new German state. But Thomas prefers to realize himself as a writer and in doing so discovers his potential as a poetic rebel. His very first play was banned and soon afterwards he lost his place at the film school. When the tanks of the Soviet Union roll through the Czech capital Prague in 1968, Brasch and his girlfriend Sanda and other students try to call for protest in the streets of Berlin - and fail. His own father betrays him to the Stasi and allows Thomas to go to prison. After being paroled, he continues to try his hand at poet writing about love, revolt and death. In the GDR, however, you don't want to have anything to do with someone like him.

No synopsis available yet.

Melanie is in her mid-thirties and works for the Brandenburg police. Her precinct is the province north of Berlin. Melanie likes it when anybody likes her. If it gets political, she keeps herself out. But that's no longer so easy when her best friend Lydia, an ex-daily soap star, makes herself important as a populist influencer with right-wing slogans in her home village and a street disappears overnight. Its bumpy cobblestones were the last evidence of a dark time when building material for the Wehrmacht was mined at the Kiessee, today a bathing area. Forced laborers and concentration camp prisoners toiled here. Elementary school teacher Anja considers it a thoughtless mess that this stone memorial to history should simply be asphalted. With brown homeland paroles, Lydia heats up the mood in the village and earns good money through clicks on the Internet. When the violence escalates, law enforcement officer Melanie, who is addicted to harmony, has to decide which side she is on.

Simon's spontaneous decision to help a stranger embroils him in a murder plot.

A young man works for a chauffeur company and is given the job of driving the favorite daughter of a Qatari prince who is to undergo an operation in Germany. He and the open-hearted woman grow closer, but then the patriarch's health causes their planned wedding to be brought forward.

Composed in 1824, Beethoven's "Symphony No. 9" will celebrate its bicentennial in 2024. With its famous finale based on Schiller's poem "An die Freude" (Ode to Joy), this colossal work is now one of the symbols of European unity. How was this symphony created? And how has it survived two centuries of history?

Bruno and Katja Bassmann are on their way to the Côte d'Azur. During a stopover at a bistro, Katja disappears without a trace. Bruno is convinced that she has been kidnapped. But neither the police nor the embassy can help. Only the German-speaking taxi driver Aliya supports him in his search. They get caught up in a murderous network that leads straight to the underworld.

Ben wakes up from an artificial coma after a failed mission. The personal protector has to deal with the fact that he could not prevent the death of a little girl. In order to recover, the BKA officer takes a break from the police service and drives to the Baltic Sea with his girlfriend Marion. He spent happy days there as a child. The first visit to his parents in years is at the same time the return to the place of painful memories, because back then his best friend Timmi was killed in a mysterious accident. To his astonishment, he now learns that Timmi, now an adult, is alive and lying in a hospital as a coma patient. Together with Marion, a doctor who specializes in this diseases, Ben wants to reach Timmi with the help of MRI technology. Perhaps the trauma can be resolved if the cause can be brought to light. Unlike Ben, however, neither Timmi's father nor the village cop Nolting seem interested in it. A web of guilt, lies and deception has to be unraveled to clue to the puzzle.

Hatun Aynur Sürücü, a German woman of Kurdish origin, was shot dead by her brothers at a bus stop in 2005. The story of a woman who fought for her freedom and independence despite her family's objections, and whose life ended in a horrific murder.

No synopsis available yet.

A coroner finds a capsule in the head of a heavily mutilated corpse, containing a phone number and single word: the name of his daughter.

Forty tons is no burden for Bruno. When he climbs into his truck and drives along Brandenburg's roads, he feels free. It's different at home. Bruno is a good husband. And a loving father. But the burden of family life weighs heavily on his shoulders. As often as he can, he escapes to his driver's cab. Then Ricky crosses his path. This encounter throws his life completely into question. He has to decide whether he wants to continue living his old life or start all over again.

The day begins like a nightmare: Sybille Thalheim wakes up in a strange hotel room with a bloodstained knife in her hand.

Three women, three different stories, one room in a psychiatric clinic. A strong and tumultuous relationship erupts among them, evolving into an energetic, honest and erotic bond. This takes them to a point where their hopes may be fulfilled… in very different ways.

Karin Wegemann has been transferred. Instead of being on active duty at the LKA, she has been teaching prospective colleagues at the police academy for several months. But a life at a standstill is not made for a woman who feels most comfortable in a headwind. The career change brings her neither external stability nor inner peace. Her superiors see this too. One evening, Wegemann meets investigative journalist Maik Fellner. Child trafficking in Germany has been Fellner's topic for years, but his articles ultimately have no effect whatsoever, and his harrowing research is at best denigrated as slander. Fellner needs Wegemann, but he needs her as an active police officer. He puts Wegemann under pressure and tells her about a 14-year-old witness who has put him on the trail of a child trafficking ring in Potsdam. Her investigation puts her in dire straits, because the perpetrators also know that there is a witness.

The retired Chief superintendent Jakob Franck who often had to inform relatives as a "death messenger", now hopes to lead a life beyond the dead.

The turbulent relationship between Oskar and Alex ends in a big blaze, Alex has set fire in Oskar's apartment. So Oskar decides that everything shall be different with the next one and he makes a deal with fun-loving Masha: sleeping together but no making love. They both drift through Berlin and through their lives, sometimes playful, sometimes obsessively. And even Masha has her issues. While trying to build up a "normal" relationship, both Masha and Oskar reach their limits. - Written by Claudia Romdhane

No synopsis available yet.

A 13-year-old Indian boy is found unconscious after being attacked in the jungle by the evil spirit Fayu Ujmu. A shaman attempts to ritually tame the spirit and advises the boy’s father to capture it. This story is based on a Chachi Indian legend; it was shot with indigenous inhabitants of the jungle community of Loma Linda, on the Rio Cayapas.

In East Berlin in the late 70s, two boys meet one evening in a disco: Thomas, who is from a working class family and is doing an apprenticeship, and Michael, a 16-year-old school pupil from an educated middle-class family. They both miss the tram home and walk together instead, ending up at Michael’s house where they discuss God and the world into the early hours. Following this encounter the two boys enter into an unusual friendship, united by their mutual desire to get away from the phoniness, the limitations and the restrictions of their parents and of society.

A satire about a West Berlin commercial producer with an East German background. To stave off his company’s bankruptcy and collect a second round of Western aid money, he “repeats” his flight from East Berlin – on, of all days, November 9, 1989.

A gay man's return to his family in East Germany begins a series of tragic events.

Actor Ernst Stein, having abdicated from the stage in 1968 in protest of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, has long since retreated from the world around him. In a remote house encircled by an overgrown garden, he lives in a world of dreams and memories. Suddenly, in 1989, an out-of-kilter society sends forth its progeny. Young people, tramps and characters of all sorts take refuge with Stein for a short span, carrying the turmoil of the times into his house.

Melissa (38) and Nadja (23) live together in Berlin. Melissa, a tomboyish beauty, is professionally successful but privately rather frustrated and damaged by men. Nadja is an intelligent, sensitive girl who likes to hide her gentle femininity behind a facade of aggressive cheekiness, and the harmonious coexistence of the two women is disrupted by Nadja's sudden desire to have a child. The hunt for the ideal father for her "elite baby" begins. He should be strong, intelligent, sensitive and lovable. Just as they imagine the only acceptable man who has ever existed in their opinion: Albert Einstein. But unfortunately he is already dead! In the search for their "EINSTEIN", men are presented to us with their quirks and neuroses, victims of our "modern industrial society".

No synopsis available yet.

Children are introduced to the magical world of cinema in a cheerful and fantastic way; embedded in a turbulent story, they learn about the film professions. A young author, Alice, has written a story and travels to the DEFA feature film studio where this story is to be realized. On the way there, she meets characters she has already invented. The doorman, who is later recognized as one of the actors, wants to refuse them entry. Now begins a cheerful plot to realize the story, which is based on a well-known fairy tale, combined with the chase of the gatekeeper, prince and princess. Alice stands up for her charges, who occasionally slip away from her, and tries to move the plot forward, which involves various film professions. In the end, the real and the fictional merge in a fairytale meadow.