Kerstin Thielemann

Horst Schlämmer is back—and he's fed up. People all over Germany are in a bad mood. So he leaves Grevenbroich and sets off in search of happiness. It must be somewhere!

East Germany. Summer, late 70's. Three years after her boyfriend Wassilij's apparent death, Nelly Senff decides to escape from behind the Berlin wall with her son Alexej, leaving her traumatic memories and past behind. Pretending to marry a West German, she crosses the border to start a new life in the West. But soon her past starts to haunt her as the Allied Secret Service begin to question Wassilij's mysterious disappearance. Is he still alive? Was he a spy? Plagued by her past and fraught with paranoia, Nelly is forced to choose between discovering the truth about her former lover and her hopes for a better tomorrow.

Thomas Brasch was born as a German-Jewish emigrant in England in order to move to the young GDR with his family at the beginning of the 1950s. His father Horst is primarily interested in helping to build the new German state. But Thomas prefers to realize himself as a writer and in doing so discovers his potential as a poetic rebel. His very first play was banned and soon afterwards he lost his place at the film school. When the tanks of the Soviet Union roll through the Czech capital Prague in 1968, Brasch and his girlfriend Sanda and other students try to call for protest in the streets of Berlin - and fail. His own father betrays him to the Stasi and allows Thomas to go to prison. After being paroled, he continues to try his hand at poet writing about love, revolt and death. In the GDR, however, you don't want to have anything to do with someone like him.

At the age of 20, Joachim is unexpectedly accepted into the renowned acting school in Munich and moves into the villa with his grandparents, Inge and Hermann. Between the bizarre challenges of acting school and the eccentric, mostly alcohol-fueled rituals of his grandparents, Joachim tries to find his place in the world — without knowing what role he actually plays in it.

Director Gregor Samsa, washed-up and in his late fifties, is reviewing his life. Having wasted it as a cultural worker doesn't exactly add to his joy.

The Yildiz brothers - Celal, Sami and Mesut - still live under one roof - despite their differences. The family bridal shop is doing really badly and they each yearn for a different life: Heartthrob Celal pines for his ex-girlfriend Anna and risks every last cent of their family inheritance for his dream of a mobile phone shop. Sami is searching for true love but ruins every blind date with his anger mis-management. And Mesut, the youngest of the three, tries to combine a cool music career with his strict adherence to the Koran. So when a sweet little baby comes careering into their lives, nothing is as it was before. The three young Turkish bachelors are given a crash course in responsibility.

A tricky out-of-area mission for Peter Lohmeyer alias Chief Inspector Jan Fabel in his fourth case: in the hustle and bustle of Cologne Carnival, of all things, the introverted hamburger has to chase a serial killer and stop a colleague from going it alone. Lisa Maria Potthoff plays the policewoman Maria, whose traumatic experience turns into a blind thirst for vengeance, Stipe Erceg can be seen in the role of the burned-out top chef and Murathan Muslu as a macho criminal. The lost souls are what make this bestseller film adaptation by the author Craig Russell, which is extremely exciting right up to the last second.