Kirsten Dene

Set in Hamburg's “Hell's Kitchen,” a waterfront milieu of gangsters, pimps, dealers and prostitutes, the story follows the attempts of an ex-seaman first to insinuate himself into the scene, and then to extricate himself from it. He becomes a small-time pimp, sending his naive girlfriend out onto the streets thinking she is financing their middle-class future. When he becomes involved with an old pal, Nil, he increases his criminal portfolio. But when he steals Nil's girlfriend and things heat up, he leaves for his sister's middle-class home in Berlin, where his attempts to fit in are doomed from the start. Returning to Hamburg, he starts a rapid decline that delivers him into the waiting arms of Nil, whose revenge is merciless.

Berlin 1808. A young, immature student who considers himself a poet, August Varnhagen, enters the famous salon of Rahel Levin, one of the first assimilated Jewish women of the Romantic period. He has heard of this woman who was praised by all for her wit and wisdom and he comes because he seeks connection and relations and in this salon the most famous men of the time crowded.

If you climb, you risk falling. For master builder Solness, this is doubly true. He had started out as a clerk in an architect's office, but soon got his own commissions and pushed his boss more and more to the side. Marrying a wealthy woman and her stately possessions came in handy for him. When the house he inherited fell victim to a fire, he subdivided the site and placed single-family homes on it. His boss became his employee, as did his son, and finally he made his fiancee his accountant. She adores him, which he only uses to keep the family dependent. Solness is considered a happy person. But he is driven by fear and feelings of guilt.

Heldenplatz centers on a Jewish family in the Vienna of 1988. The main character, Professor Josef Schuster, a mathematician, who can no longer stand the anti-Semitism he still finds in Austria 50 years after the Anschluss – commits suicide by jumping out of his apartment window onto the historic Heldenplatz before the play begins.

This sociocritical film series in 4 parts is a follow-up to the Alpensaga and depicts the economic and cultural development in Austria after the war. Individual films focus on the themes of individualization and the rise of consume culture as well as the political shift of the dominating social democratic forces from a blue-collar party to more market oriented policies.