Franz Fühmann

East Germany's contribution to the 1957 Cannes Film Festival was the wartime melodrama Betrogen bis zum Juengsten Tag. Had the film been released in the U.S., the title would probably have translated to Duped Till the Last. The film condemns the Nazi mindset by concentrating on a particularly odious cover-up. When his son is involved in the accidental killing of a girl, a Gestapo general pulls strings to save the boy from prosecution. The general manages to pin the blame for the killing on a group of Russians, whereupon he gives the men under his command carte blanche to round up and execute as many innocent Russians as they wish. This act of brutality is contrasted with the pangs of guilt suffered by the son and his co-conspirators.

Anna, the witch girl, has one short leg and one long leg and is therefore only called the hobble witch. Anna trains until she is far superior to all the others in both running and sneaking races. When she even reaches the end of the world and outwits two clumsy giants who do not want any creature to escape from this terrible place alive, she realises that she can be proud of herself.

During the Greek summer in the war year of 1944, a German military unit sets up camp on the plateau of Thebes. Armed with a 16 mm camera, the captain of the unit, a former professor for classical Greek philology, comes up with the idea to film the myth of Oedipus.

During the Allied retreat on Dunkirk in May 1940, 99 captured English soldiers and officers were shot by an SS unit in a French village. The only survivor of the massacre Albert Pooley stakes health and life to find the murderer of his comrades. The television film shows the international solidarity of ordinary people, who are brought together by the memory of a terrible war crime and make this crime atone for. Based on a factual report by Cyril Jolly.

A fantasy story about the young boy Lutz who is looking, with two friends, for a missing magical bird.

Film by Kurt Jung-Alsen.

August 24, 1937: a day in the life of expressionist sculptor and author Ernst Barlach (Fred Düren). Barlach lives in the small town of Güstrow, keeping to himself and wanting to steer clear of politics. On this day he learns that the Nazis have dragged his famous 1927 sculpture The Hovering Angel out of the Güstrow Cathedral. Barlach begins to reflect on his life of “inner emigration” and on his work.

A soldier returns from the war. As he has nowhere to stay, he moves to hell. There he is ordered by the devil to stoke the fire under the cauldrons and add coals. When he looks into the cauldron, he sees his captain, the marshal and the king sitting in it. They beg the soldier to help them to freedom. But the soldier remembers what these three had done to him on earth and seals the cauldron so tightly that the captain, marshal and king can never return. Now the soldier returns to earth reassured.