Traute Hoess

We look back at more than half a century of mysterious artistic creation while trying to crack a unique artistic code. Why are people moved to tears when Robert “Bob” Wilson puts minimalistic petrol pumps into a production of Shakespeare’s sonnets? Why does merciless repetition change our understanding of something? Together with Tom Waits, Willem Dafoe or Marina Abramović we trace back our own experience of Bob’s art. Is it true what Philipp Glass the collaborator of the milestone piece “Einstein on the Beach” laughingly and with apparent pleasure exclaims “what does it mean? It doesn’t mean anything!”?

No synopsis available yet.

Anita and Fred have been a couple for 50 years, and happily married for nearly as long. They have two grown children, and their grandchildren are finishing school. Both can look back at a fulfilling past, but their lives are still rich and vibrant. The fact that Fred is terribly ill has been hidden from the family. For the first time in all these years, Fred takes some liberties, which his wife interprets as an affront. Never before has she felt so abandoned. Although she starts to question her relationship, a love like theirs cannot end so easily. Indeed it should never end.

She was sweet, she was cute. But just before her 14th birthday, Daddy’s little princess mutates into a petulant pubescent nightmare. Journalist Hannes Wenger decides to take a time-out from work to guide his daughter Carla through this difficult phase in her life and, above all, to keep her away from alcohol, boys and other temptations. This is easier said than done, however, and when his wife Sara goes back to work, Hannes proves himself entirely inept at raising a teenager. Whether it’s Carla’s birthday party, her mobile phone contract or her first time, Hannes makes one awkward blunder after another. The fact that other teens have embarrassing fathers provides only faint consolation; Hannes’ best friend is a war reporter named Holger who prefers to be shot at in war zones rather than stay at home and be driven crazy by his own teenage nightmare.

Luisa works as a couples therapist and has a loveless relationship with her husband Richard, but at the same time she is having an affair with Richard's boss Leopold. As everything slowly threatens to get out of hand, she wakes up one morning to find a second Luisa next to her, who looks just like her but, unlike the original, is somewhat naive and completely relaxed. Luisa christens her doppelganger Ann. At first, everything seems perfect, because while Ann lives out her needs and stays with Richard, Luisa can finally spend more time with Leopold. But as Richard slowly takes a liking to Ann, Luisa realizes that she is not happy with the new situation either. A serious conflict begins to brew between the two halves of her personality...

Life gets on Erol Ozak's nerves. The enforcement officer is supposed to collect something from people who have nothing. And suddenly there's a bag of money, a dead person, then the money is gone again and the melancholy man from the tax office has a bag of problems instead. A bit of genre coolness, a bit of arthouse slowness, a bit of robber's tale. Sözer and Eggert in silent greatness. Unusual, brittle, worth seeing.

Hotte is a petty criminal on probation. He has two teenage children, but he doesn't want to know anything about them. When their grandmother dies, he is given custody of them, which he is not particularly happy about - but he could do with the child benefit. And gradually he starts to like life as a middle-class family man - but probation officer Benno is convinced that Hotte doesn't have what it takes to be a responsible father and does everything he can to sabotage his new start. But Hotte takes care of that himself by getting involved in a crooked deal with his Albanian buddy Ivic. Benno is also plagued by private worries: he can't father any children, but his girlfriend Tanja is desperate to have offspring...

In the Bavaria of the 1980s, a father and his son compare their respective views on a family past heavy with resentment and unsaid.

Franziska had to release her newborn son for adoption on pressure from her parents as she was a teenager. Now 25 years later she has a successful career as a businesswoman. When her friends Bogdan and Mimi adopt a Ukrainian child, she remembers her own child. As the relationship with her partner Robert breaks up, she decides to search for him. She finally finds Oliver, her son in Munich. He grew up in various homes and foster care. He is a drug addict and now has a child himself with his girlfriend Sandy. She persuades him to withdraw and supports him.

A day in the life of Berlin cab driver Klaus Grill.

Newlyweds Hedda and Jorgen Tesman are just returning from their honeymoon to a villa by the edge of the forest with a breathtaking view on the city. Restoration work on their home has not yet been completed, and Jorgen will soon be running out of money. That's if he doesn't succeed Dr. Franck Brack as head physician of the city hospital. Jorgen and Hedda prepare dinner for Brack, when two uninvited guests emerge. As the evening progesses the group becomes entangled in a weave of guilt, love and betrayal and when morning comes disaster has struck.

Crying children, changing diapers, baby food - everything around Jan seems to revolve around having children. Not only is his best friend Theo a new father, but his sister-in-law Marion's children also keep the successful engineer on his toes. So it's all the better that Jan's marriage to Hanna is a child-free zone. Until now - because Hanna's family plans are becoming more and more concrete... When she brings up her desire to have children one evening, a heated argument develops that ends in a compromise: To test whether the couple is even ready to take responsibility for a child, they first want to look after a dog for a few weeks. If that goes well, they can start thinking about having a baby. A short time later, bulldog Lucky moves in with them and causes a huge stir in the couple's lives...

Eva lives a happy life with her ​​father, an unsuccessful but always optimistic car salesman, her consumerist mother, and her quirky grandmother. But Eva is a tad different - she suffers from Tourette's syndrome. Her family has long been accustomed to her tics and the accompanying insults and bullying, and Eva has come to grips with her role as an outsider. When her father gets a job offer to work in Berlin, they must suddenly leave their familiar surroundings. But Eva won't have it, this move must be prevented - at any price!

Berlin, the vibrant life. Only cashier Emma feels really lonely. There is nothing wrong with her, she just goes underground in the big city. Her desire to meet people has brought Emma to a strange idea: she lets go in the supermarket purses of customers and later presents herself as a hospitable finder, who invites you to pick up at the laid table. Unfortunately, the visit remains short. Only the shrewd homeless August who sees through her starts to get interested in Emma.

North Face tells the story of two German climbers Toni Kurz and Andreas Hinterstoisser and their attempt to scale the deadly North Face of the Eiger.

Follows six very different men and their struggles with women, family and work. Yet, they are somehow connected to each other.

At 52, traveling salesman Wolfgang Zenker (Edgar Selge) is in old school territory: he peddles the company's classic clothing line to boutiques that cater to women over 35. When Wolfi loses his drivers license in his brand-new Mercedes but can't afford to lose the season's sales because his frustrated wife (Franziska Walser) desperately wants a new bathroom, their son's vacation plans take a back seat as Karsten (Florian Bartholomäi) is forced to making sales rounds with his father instead of celebrating his high school graduation in Spain. Also making the rounds in small town southern Germany is successful and attractive sales rival Steven Brookmüller (Roman Knizka), 33. As the men's paths cross, long-hidden secrets are revealed and things come to a hilarious head.

An intimate study of two women friends who come to each other because of troubles with everyday life and with men and thus try to enjoy a life based on their ideas.

Two very different love stories cross each other in warm and magical way. A humanistic and yet mysterious film about love and death near the German/Danish border.

The lonely bank-employee Phillip follows a strict pattern of somewhat compulsive actions keeping his encounters with strangers to a minimum. When his home one day is robbed of all content and he later meets the enchanting blind cellist Lina, he finds, however, he needs to start improvising and taking chances.

Martin, a nu-jazz trumpet player with a unique style, is fighting against convention and mediocrity. He will not accept any compromise, neither in his music, nor in love. When he gets the feeling that Kristina, the love of his life, only loves him for his musical talents, he is deeply hurt.Disappointed, he bids farewell to both her and his previous life. On the edge of society, he meets an old woman, Hanna, who bequeaths him her pain in the form of poems. Martin is immediately fascinated. Can they guide him back to himself, to Kristina, or to his music?

No synopsis available yet.

Spring 1945: the Allies are outside Hamburg. In front of a movie theater, Lena Brücker meets Hermann Bremer, a marine assigned to the 'final battle on the home front'. After a night of love, Lena offers to hide the young man in her apartment during the last days of the war. This marks the beginning of a life-threatening love adventure for both of them, which they must keep secret from the rest of the world. While Lena blossoms over the next few weeks, Hermann suffers from his confinement and the constant fear of being discovered. Nevertheless, Lena will not tell her lover that the war is over so that she can spend as many days as possible with him on their shared 'mattress island' while everything changes outside.

After a small sample of fabric, the eternal student and occasional dealer Paul ends up in the emergency room. Enraged, father Willi takes his offspring back to his sleepy Westphalian home, where foxes and rabbits still say goodnight to each other. He locks him up in the dog kennel on his farm and makes him memorize a doctor's novel to get him out of his head and teach him about real life. But not only Paul's girlfriend Lena, but also two dealers miss Paul and set off in search of him...

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

Something terrible is about to happen in a small town in Germany. Nobody knows the reason why, except one person: Rico Bartsch. The 15-year old grammar school pupil, an absolute outsider, is in love with the most beautiful girl at his school. What in the beginning is a longing that can never be fulfilled will come true at the end of the story. Beautiful Regine will beg for Rico’s love. Until then several inhabitants of the town will die an unnatural death...

Vienna in 2021. Europe is divided into American sectors. The currency is being converted from the euro to the dollar. Johnny Bush (the son of American peacekeeper George Bush) is the Chancellor of Austria. English becomes the primary language; dialects are forbidden. The Viennese meet underground (with the dinosaurs) to practice their Viennese dialect. The German journalist August Maria Kaiser comes to Vienna to research a report on the missing Jörg Haider. Haider had ruled Austria for the past 20 years and was expelled by the Americans. On his journey to uncover the truth about Haider, Kaiser meets many acquaintances.

No synopsis available yet.

A group of kids grow up on the short, wrong (east) side of the Sonnenallee in Berlin, right next to one of the few border crossings between East and West reserved for German citizens. The antics of these kids, their families, of the "West German" friends and relatives who come to visit, and of the East German border guards, all serve to illustrate the absurdity of everyday life on the Sonnenallee, and therefore throughout the former East Germany.

The true story of Otomo, a black man seeking work and asylum in the German city of Stuttgart. However, all he finds is racism, police trouble and his final destiny.

Two young and attractive social workers/nuns bring fresh air into a city missionary station, but are also challenged by lust and money, offered by a millionaire.

Frank, a perpetual loser from the "milieu", runs over a pedestrian during an argument with his lover Sabine and commits a hit-and-run. A petty criminal and friend of the dead man, to whom he has confessed his crime, hires him as a "bill collector" and charges him with a murder he committed himself.

The story of a German singer named Willie, who while working in Switzerland, falls in love with a Jewish composer named Robert, whose family is helping people to flee from the Nazis. Robert’s family is skeptical of Willie, thinking she could be a Nazi as she becomes famous for singing the song “Lili Marleen”.

A full moon night in a godforsaken region somewhere between Fulda and the Carpathians: On a lonely country road, opera diva Alma Meyer-Efeu and her pianist rush towards another comeback attempt. At the same time, a trio of ladies and their manager race through the night, fleeing from debts, scandals and affairs. And Jutta Schröder, the tabloid gossip, is not far away either. As luck would have it, the seven meet up and end up in a remote castle ruin in their search for a place to spend the night...

No synopsis available yet.

A woman reflects on her romantic relationship with a young Moroccan years ago. Her daughter travels to Morocco, attempting to relive her mother's past.

The shy Michael Seebisch wants to work even more in the new year. His great love is for computers. Only the enamel of great opera voices can transport him from everyday life to another, imaginative world.

Episode movie about the no-future generation of the early 1980s.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.

No synopsis available yet.