Käte Jaenicke

In 1924, Oskar Matzerath is born in the Free City of Danzig. At age three, he falls down a flight of stairs and stops growing. In 1939, World War II breaks out.

Heinz Erhardt wanders through the Black Forest as a photographer for a magazine. On the train he meets a young girl who from now on does not leave his side.

Summer in Germany, anno 1970. Italy is the number one destination. As every year, swarms of Teutonic tourists make their way to the Adriatic Sea. Only Willi Hirsekorn from Castrop-Rauxel has so far no plans to break south. That changes, however, as the bitchy neighbor Mizzi Buntje proudly tells of their upcoming holiday in Italy. Willi can not afford this boasting. Shortly determined, the bags are packed, and already rushes Willi in the car with his wife Sieglinde, daughter Lotti and son Kuno the sun.

In the winter of 1942-43, a Jewish family leaps from a train going through Silesia. They are separated in the woods, and Leon, a local peasant who's now a farmer of some wealth, discovers the woman, Rosa, and hides her in his cellar. Leon's a middle-aged Catholic bachelor, tormented by his sexual drive. He doesn't tell Rosa he's seen signs her husband is alive, and he begs her to love him. Rosa offers herself to Leon if he'll help a local Jew in hiding who needs money. Leon pays, and love between Rosa and him does develop, but then Leon's peasant subservience and his limited empathy lead to tragedy. At the war's end, a ray of sunshine comes from an unexpected place.

East Berlin, shortly after the construction of the Berlin Wall. Kurt Schröder and his family dig a tunnel to escape to West Berlin as they struggle to overcome the obstacles blocking their underground path to freedom.

A quiet, offbeat German dramedy about self-reinvention and the messy ways we try to escape ourselves. When a middle-aged woman decides to shed her old life and adopt the name “Harry,” her transformation unsettles family, friends, and lovers who can’t quite keep up. Blurring gender identity, midlife crisis, and dark humour, the film plays like a bittersweet character study — deadpan, gently absurd, and tinged with melancholy.

After ten years, Hella Mayer and her boyhood friend Andreas meet again in Berlin on the street. Both know each other from common dance lessons times.