MDR

In the aftermath of a tragic fire in a Romanian club, burn victims begin dying in hospitals from wounds that were not life threatening. A team of investigative journalists move into action uncovering the mass corruption of the health system and of the state institutions. Collective follows journalists, whistle blowers, and authorities alike. An immersive and uncompromising look into a dysfunctional system, exposing corruption, propaganda, and manipulation that nowadays affect not only Romania, but societies around the world.

An Hungarian youth comes of age at Buchenwald during World War II. György Köves is 14, the son of a merchant who's sent to a forced labor camp. After his father's departure, György gets a job at a brickyard; his bus is stopped and its Jewish occupants sent to camps. There, György find camaraderie, suffering, cruelty, illness, and death. He hears advice on preserving one's dignity and self-esteem. He discovers hatred. If he does survive and returns to Budapest, what will he find? What is natural; what is it to be a Jew? Sepia, black and white, and color alternate to shade the mood.

A 9th century woman of English extraction born in the German city of Ingelheim disguises herself as a man and rises through the Vatican ranks.

Rita Vogt is a radical West German terrorist who abandons the revolution and settles in East Germany with a new identity provided by the East German secret service. She lives in constant fear of having her cover blown, which unavoidably happens after the German re-unification.

Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union, sits down with filmmaker Werner Herzog to discuss his many achievements. Topics include the talks to reduce nuclear weapons, the reunification of Germany and the dissolution of his country.

Both a visit to a very peculiar exhibition at the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden, Germany, as well as an unprejudiced look at the artistic depiction of violence throughout history and the ways in which that depiction has been gendered.

The adolescent Milan discovers his own suspected homosexuality at the age of 17 and the consequences for him and his family but also the liberation as he understands why he has been so down and rebellious.

Second-hand car sales man Willenbrock has everything that he could ever wish for. He is married, has two lovers, a cottage in the German city Grünen, and a BMW. Yet one day while at his cottage he gets mugged and his life is drastically changed. Little by little the world he once felt safe in falls apart around him.

As a nun, Katharina von Bora lives the life destined for her until she comes into contact with a completely new world of thought in the early 20s through the writings of Martin Luther. She flees with some of her co-sisters and comes without legal status, without income and rejected by her family to Wittenberg, where she meets Martin Luther personally. Katharina decides to marry the reformer and, as his wife, becomes a respected housekeeper, an equal interlocutor and the mother of their children together.

Summer 1944, Schwäbisch Hall. Contrary to the war propaganda and the decreed heroism, the 16-year-old boys dream of Swing music, sex and freedom - and of Lore, the air force helper from the air base, who attracts all eyes in her red swimsuit. At the same time, uncle, Knuffke, Bubu, tongue kiss and Hosenmacher suspect that they will not escape the horror of the front. "Stay tuned," Lore calls after them. But tongue kiss gets it first and also pants maker will not survive the war.

It's 1989 in East Berlin: Suzie is kicked out of school shortly before she graduates from high school and has to defend herself as a worker in the cable factory. However, a randomly taken photo leads her to the fashion world of the GDR. The editor-in-chief Elsa Wilbrodt put her on the cover of Sibylle, the fashion magazine of the GDR. In the Berlin underground scene she made the acquaintance of the gay fashion designer Rudi and the photographer Coyote. Suzie must decide if she's brave enough to leave the old strands behind forever.

In love with a girl that smells of oranges while in a complicated relationship with his father, Darek is gentle, strong and devoted to his little sister and their herd of horses. Darek's world is a story about the joy and pain of growing up in the isolated yet beautiful Lusatian Mountains. Here, horses are not expensive specimens of racing stables but beings you should care for and love. Not even that is enough in life though, as Darek finds out nearing the Summer's end, closing his childhood definitely. However, just like any ending, this is a start of something new.

A retrospective look at the youth cultures born in the German Democratic Republic. A celebration of the lust for life, a contemporary trip into the world of skate, a tale on three heroes and their boards, from their childhood in the seventies, through their teenage rebellion in the eighties and the summer of 1989, when their life changed forever, to 2011.

In this grim German drama, a troubled 14-year-old boy's pent-up rage and frustration leads him to involvement with a bad crowd and gets him caught up in an inescapable spiral of increasingly self-destructive and deadly violence.

The discovery of a magic mirror allows Fred to realize his dream: his twin tidies up his room, eats without complaining and becomes first in class. But Fred did not keep his promise to keep this secret by revealing it to his friend, Émile.

"Kruso" tells of the last summer before the Wall came down on the small island of Hiddensee in the Baltic Sea. Beyond state-organized tourism, the isolated island became a kind of artist colony every year and a place of longing for dropouts and alternatives. Due to its proximity to Denmark, Hiddensee was also the starting point for the flight across the Baltic Sea.

2024 is likely to be a decisive year for Sahra Wagenknecht's political future. In the arena of power, she might assume a role that she is already very familiar with. In the early years following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Sahra Wagenknecht became the "most famous face" of the PDS, the successor party to the SED. Yet, even as the youngest member of the party's executive board, she was considered a "disruptive factor." She is unyielding and swims against the tide. Sahra Wagenknecht does not distance herself from Stalinism, nor from the Berlin Wall, and wishes for a reformed GDR.

A former East German boxing champion reduced to working as a bouncer and debt collector is forced to reflect on his life when he is diagnosed with a fatal disease.

Leni Riefenstahl's flamboyant Nazi aesthetics shaped the public image of the 1936 Olympics. Never before had sports and politics been mixed. Through archive photos and reconstructions, we get a closer look into the historical propaganda show.

Each year in June, Bavarian housewife Elke Richter visits family in Halle, in the GDR. There she meets family friend Gregor Pohl, a married carpenter, and they begin having an affair. After her family stops the annual visits due to the husband's promotion in the communist regime, the adulterous couple arranges to meet on other holidays. After Gorbachev's Glasnost leads to the fall of the Iron Curtain, everything changes, and Gregor chooses to emigrate to Canada.