Gunther Kortwich

A group of angels look longingly upon the life of humans. Berlin now is a very different place: unified in name but overrun with crime, corruption, and—in what turns out to be a key theme here—Americans.

Petra von Kant is a successful fashion designer -- arrogant, caustic, and self-satisfied. She mistreats Marlene (her secretary, maid, and co-designer). Enter Karin, a 23-year-old beauty who wants to be a model. Petra falls in love with Karin and invites her to move in.

Two British beauties go to Barbados with a yacht captain who does not know what he's in for.

In a futuristic, totalitarian society wherein the government controls all facets of the media, a homicide detective investigates a string of bombings and uncovers more than he bargained for.

A teenager named Kurrat mysteriously disappears from a German boys' school. Then a teacher is found dead; the mystery grows.

Edda Chiemnyjewski, a freelance press photographer and single mother living in 1970s West Berlin, is confronted with the fact that "a cook has no time for affairs of state". She also fails to find a market for the project she has been working on with her women′s photography group that seeks to document the city. While from today′s perspective the city, which becomes one of the film′s protagonists, looks like post-war Berlin, little has actually changed as regards the precarious existence of free-lancers. With a heavy dose of self-irony Helke Sander, who also plays the leading role, tells of a divided life in a divided city.

The Second World War is over and now begins in post-war Germany, the reconstruction. Jakob Formann sees his chance here and begins a rapid rise as an entrepreneur.

“The bear leaves Berlin. It is fed up with its city. On the way two Russian ladies, Anna and her daughter Arisha, hire him as a driver. They are joined by a Santa Claus who despises Christmas and a Vietnamese family who are on their way to the sea. They sing a song together, The Weeping Song by Nick Cave. And they are out to find a stone ring that is buried on the beach. The film was commissioned by a Japanese car museum. There you could see the film with six smells (!), sitting on car seats that would tilt in corners and shake on cobble stone pavement. This small film saved a big one’s life: FARAWAY, SO CLOSE! could not have been finished for financial reasons if this opportunity to make a short film with the same team had not arisen. That is how we financed the last week of shooting FARAWAY, SO CLOSE!.”