Josef Bierbichler

An aged tailor recalls his life as the schoolteacher of a small village in Northern Germany that was struck by a series of strange events in the year leading up to WWI.

A series of events unfold like a chain reaction, all stemming from a minor event that brings the film's five characters together. Set in Paris, France, Anne is an actress whose boyfriend Georges photographs the war in Kosovo. Georges' brother, Jean, is looking for the entry code to Georges' apartment. These characters' lives interconnect with a Romanian immigrant and a deaf teacher.

A small Bavarian village is renowned for its "Ruby Glass" glass blowing works. When the foreman of the works dies suddenly without revealing the secret of the Ruby Glass, the town slides into a deep depression, and the owner of the glassworks becomes obssessed with the lost secret.

A writer tries unsuccessfully to sell his screenplays and plays. He marries a television editor, but she only wants to fuck him and thinks nothing of his work. He then remembers his old Parisian lover Rita, calls himself Rita from then on and becomes her wife. When a French director stages a play of his, he meets Rita again in Paris and the two women become a happy couple.

The story of former Bayern Munich president Kurt Landauer, a Bavarian jew ousted by the National Socialists and brought to the concentration camp of Dachau, where he survived to come back and start to rebuild his old club after World War II.

Jesus returns to present-day Bavaria, walks around Munich in a somewhat dazed manner and strikes up an affair with a nun, arguing that they are married anyway. Therefore, he refers to himself as "Ober" (waiter), obviously the male form of "Oberin" (Mother Superior). He occasionally transforms into a snake when being afraid and is finally carried up into the sky by the nun, who transforms into a bird of prey.

After several years in a coma, the Comanche, an Indian, wakes up in a Bavarian hospital. But reality does not match the dreams he had of it during his coma: it seems bleak and barren to him. The Comanche shows the audience his view of everyday life in Germany, with a collage of images and language demonstrating the absurdity of this reality.

Martha and Betty have known each other for twenty years and they have decided to breakthrough. But while Martha realizes that her father has only faked his death wish in order to see the great love of his life again on Lake Maggiore, Betty mourns her stepfather Ernesto, who supposedly died years ago.

Stalingrad, 1942: just as he is complaining about the "blockheads" who are in control, a German named Herbert gets hit. Fast forward forty years after the war to Munich's Hofgarten, where in front of the patched-up ruins of the Army Museum, Herbert reappears, mistakenly believing he is still in Stalingrad, which the victorious Germans have destroyed and rebuilt in the image of Munich.

Set in a sleepy Austrian mountain village, ex-detective Simon Brenner has grown weary of his job repossessing cars and embarks on an extended getaway to the countryside. But before long he becomes embroiled in the convoluted world of the locals of a supposedly quiet town.

Having fathered an illegitimate child with his lover, Marie, feckless soldier Franz Woyzeck takes odd jobs around his small town to provide some extra money for them. One job is volunteering for experiments conducted by a local doctor, who puts Woyzeck on a diet of peas. This serves to drive him close to madness, and the discovery that Marie is involved in an affair with the local drum major exacerbates the situation. Pushed too far, Woyzeck resorts to violence.

A man who is dissatisfied with his senseless existence in his family-life and social status steals the uniform of a policeman and then enters the Oktoberfest. Now he is somebody, he is important, he can help, people respect him, etc. His wife, other relatives and some friends start to follow him while he gets some new acquaintances.

In the new film adaptation of Johanna Spyri's popular children's book, Heidi is sent to live for a short time with her eccentric grandfather, the "Alpöhi", who lives alone above the village and initially wants nothing to do with his granddaughter. Heidi's friend Peter, the baseball-playing son of an engineer from Boston, helps her out and shows her how to write e-mails. A little later, Heidi has to go to her aunt Dete in Berlin. Her grumpy daughter Clara, a lonely city girl, dyes Heidi's hair blue and not only causes the bath to overflow, but also Heidi's patience. Heidi wants to go back to her grandfather. Doris, a girl from a Berlin internet café, and 327.80 marks bring this dream within reach.

Thirteen German directors present short films exploring the state of their country.

Lene Thurner is standing on a train platform in Munich. She has to decide: back to Berlin where she lives, or toward the south, where at the foot of the Alps her family lives on the lonely farm “Hierankl”.

Dentist Adi has an extraordinary dream: a boy appears to him and asks to become his father. The unknown boy has chosen the most beautiful woman in Munich - sportswoman Ilona - as his mother. She has ambitions to win an Olympic title. Adi's reality is different: He is married to Gabi. So he sets off in search of the future Olympic champion and mother of his son. He meets her in a park and a romantic rendezvous ensues. But his wife Gabi also wants him to have a child.

Young blonde translator Rebecca lives with her boyfriend ski instructor Marco in a mountain villa owned by her friend, nurse Laura. Rene, local cinema projectionist, steals Marco's car and gets into a car crash with local Theo, whose daughter, after being in coma for a time, dies. Rene suffers from partial short term memory loss and starts a relationship with Laura. Meanwhile Marco is looking for the man who stole his car and Theo - for the man who killed his daughter...

Hedi is the new neighbor of Iva, who raises her daughter Sofia by herself. The two women start a relationship and Iva is desperately in love with Hedi. Suddenly Iva's father appears. Hedi feels strongly attracted to him. It seems that only one world exists for Hedi. Her own.

Brand, an author, who falls in love with Angela, his terminally ill wife's nurse and blunders into a dangerous spiral of passion and jealousy. A vindictive husband, an insistent chief inspector, a farsighted priest and a proud wife entrap Brand in a maelstrom of persecution, destruction and obliteration which can only end in life or death. It's a quest for redemption, the force which drives us all.

Anna, an odd, quirky young girl begins a romance with the much older dentist Dr. Armin Thal. Both lovers are neurotic, and both seem to thrive on feeding off each other's neuroses.

40-year Maria is living in a monotonous and deadlocked marriage with her husband. In addition, she has to take care of her ill despotic father. One day, she falls in love with her sensitive neighbour Dieter. But her attempt to leave her gloomy everyday life behind leads straight into tragedy.

A renowned artist must uncover a young dancer's secrets in order to truly capture her likeness for a commissioned work.

A portrait of a single day in the late summer of 1956, toward the end of Bertolt Brecht's life, as he prepares to leave his lakeside home, surrounded by the women who form his extended family.

Accepting a prize, architect Georg Winter explains that an architect has the good fortune of measuring every completed building against the rightness of his original idea. Soon Georg himself is forced to take stock of the achievements and mistakes he has made in his personal life. An intense drama in which the four members of the family travel to a mountain village to bury Georg's mother. They get stranded in bad weather. This unexpected isolation throws new light on the past and present life of the parents and the two almost-adult children.

Tatort is a long-running German/Austrian/Swiss crime television series set in various parts of these countries. The show is broadcast on the channels of ARD in Germany, ORF in Austria and SF1 in Switzerland.

A respected small-town physician has brutally killed his wife, thus ending a four-year martyrdom from which he could not escape by any other means...