MDR

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.

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.

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.

It's a hot, dry summer in Klein-Schappleben. Micha, a pretentious video game designer, wants to turn his late parents' dilapidated guesthouse into a luxury hotel with a wellness oasis. The villagers are skeptical, even though Micha loudly promises new jobs and prosperity. But his plans start to falter when the groundwater in the village dries up.

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.

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.

In Mödling, a small town near Vienna, girls between the ages of 18 and 20 have been disappearing without a trace at ever shorter intervals for the past 13 years. Residents are worried and accuse the police of incompetence. In this environment of fear and mistrust, the 19-year-old schoolgirl Jeanny meets the mysterious but charming tax consultant Johannes, which initially has something threatening about it. But Johannes sees more in Jeanny than just an innocent girl. And he gives Jeanny, who lost her father at a young age, support and recognition. He helps her to pass the Matura, he awakens her self-confidence and gives her the appreciation that she misses. An unusual love grows between the two, which is initially kept secret from everyone. As she is drawn deeper and deeper into the whirl of her feelings, the aggressive climate in the town continues to escalate. A militia is formed. Jeanny is becoming increasingly insecure. Can she really trust Johannes?

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.

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.

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.

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.

In a small town plunged into darkness, two children, Kyona and Adriel, are separated from their parents and, facing the path of exile alone, embark on a heroic journey that will take them from childhood to adolescence, in search of refuge, peace and the hope of finding their family.

"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.

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.

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.

September 1989 in the GDR. With the change of the general mood in the country, the life of 12-year-old FRITZI changes as well. Her best friend Sophie has fled with her mother through Hungary to West Germany and the only thing Fritzi has left is Sophie's little dog Sputnik. But Fritzi misses Sophie just as much as her little four-legged friend does. Therefore, she decides to bring Sputnik to Sophie. But there is only one way to get there: over the strictly guarded border. A very dangerous adventure for a 12-year-old girl and a small dog...

Harry Belafonte wrote music history. How did the black boy from Harlem manage to become one of the greatest artists of the 20th century in the middle of racist America? The film portrait tells the story of the famous singer, actor, producer and activist.

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.

Leipzig, in December 1734: Christmas brings the Bach family together. The first snow has fallen and the children are happy about the arrival of their older half-brothers. Meanwhile, Anna Magdalena supports her husband Johann Sebastian Bach. The cantor believes in his mission to bring the divine closer to people with his music. But to achieve this, the “Christmas Oratorio” must be finished on time.

In this docudrama Rosa von Praunheim looks into Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s sexual orientation, especially into his erotic experiences during his travels in Italy. Contrary to the common belief, von Praunheim argues that Goethe was not a heartbreaker and conqueror after all. It was only in Italy, that he had diverse sexual experiences, not least with men. Von Praunheim bases his assumption on letters written by Goethe to his friend Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi about these sexual encounters. Some of the content of these letters is re-encated in the film. At the same time, historians and linguists analyse and classify the letters into their historical context.