Dieter Schindelhauer

East German adaptation of Grimm‘s fairy tale "Rumpelstiltskin". A boastful miller pretends that his daughter Marie can spin straw into gold, and so she is locked into a room full of straw and ordered to spin it into gold by the next morning. A little man appears and offers his help in exchange for Marie's necklace. The greedy treasurer makes Marie spin twice more until the only thing she has left to give the little man is the promise of her first-born child…

In 1960, 400,000 farmers are forced to join the LPG. After the forced collectivization, Thomas, son of the experienced LPG chairman Rothardt, is delegated to the Oderbruch. However, he is unable to cope with the unwilling farmers in the countryside and his task of improving their work. He meets with incomprehension from his father and a conflict arises between the two.

To justify their invasion of Poland at the start of WWII, Nazi high command hatches a secret plan: six Polish men from an SS training camp are sent on a special mission to the town of Gleiwitz, to fake a Polish raid on Germany. The ‘provoked’ Germans will thus launch a ‘counterattack’ on Poland.

Was it an act of sabotage or willful negligence? The non-party engineer Heinz Solter is suddenly arrested and accused of approving a defective pipeline that caused a half million loss to his company. At first, the case seems clear-cut for the state prosecutor, but when he probes deeper, he discovers that Solter had acted against his better judgment due to the pressure from his career-driven and authoritarian boss.

1929: Marie Lehning, a farm worker from Warmsdorf on the Baltic Sea, falls in love with the fisherman's son Mingo. Both complete an apprenticeship in Lübeck. Marie wants to become a seamstress, Mingo a carpenter. After their first night of love, they swear eternal fidelity. But Marie has to return to the village, her mother is ill and her siblings are unprovided for. She starts working as a maid on a farm. Unexpectedly, she meets the young Kurt Meier from Berlin, whom she knows from before.

The thirteen year old Janni is depressed, because she's still a little behind in her physical development. This leads to bullying remarks from her classmates. One day, a film crew comes to her school to find a candidate for the role of a Prince in a movie. They choose Janni, who they think is a boy. She takes on the role. At school, she tells her classmates she plays a Princess. When the moment of truth approaches she must find the self-confidence to invite the class to the premiere.