Martin Benrath

A German Platoon is explored through the brutal fighting of the Battle of Stalingrad. After half of their number is wiped out and they're placed under the command of a sadistic captain, the platoon lieutenant leads his men to desert. The platoon members attempt escape from the city, now surrounded by the Soviet Army.

A German living in India during World War II is blackmailed by the English to impersonate an SS officer on board a cargo ship leaving Japan for Germany carrying a large supply of rubber for tyres. His mission is to disable the scuttling charges so the captain cannot sink the ship if they are stopped by English warships.

An account of the events before and after a murder committed by a disturbed businessman in a strained marriage, and what led him to perform such a shocking act.

A naive girl's love for Switzerland is put to the test in this satiric comedy. Irina is a woman from Russia who all her life has always been fascinated by Switzerland and longs to live there some day, though her notion of Swiss life has more to do with Heidi and old movies set in the Alps than reality.

A fictional, non-chronological account of the life of the scientist, adventurer and industrialist Lukas Berlinger. The key dates and central events include Berlinger's birth in 1914, his friendship with Johannes Roeder, who was the same age, his marriage to Marlit in the early 1930s and Roeder's joining the NSDAP in 1936. As a chemist and "scientist important to the war effort", Berlinger was not required to go to the front during the Second World War, but it was slowly discovered that he was helping persecuted people to escape to Switzerland. Pressure from the Gestapo cost Marlit her life, and Berlinger fled to South America. It was not until 1968 that he returned to the western part of Germany. He meets Roeder again, who is now a senator and has become rich as a "building tycoon", and meets Maria, a teacher almost 30 years his junior, who looks strikingly similar to Marlit.

During the Second World War, a small group of students at Munich University begin to question the decisions and sanity of Germany's Nazi government. The students form a resistance cell which they name the "White Rose" after a newsletter that is secretly distributed to the student body. At first small in numbers and fearful of discovery, the White Rose begins to gain massive support after a Nazi Gauleiter nearly incites a student riot after a provokative speech. At this point, the matter is taken over by the German Gestapo, who pledge to hunt down and destroy the members of the White Rose.

Reinhold Schünzel is one of the most sought-after actors and directors of cinema of the Weimar Republic. When the National Socialists come to power in 1933, he just releases his legendary gender comedy “Viktor and Victoria“. Despite his Jewish faith, Schünzel is under the special protection of Hitler and can work unhindered due to a special permit. But Schünzel's days in Germany are also numbered. In his sparkling and pointed artist portrait, director Hans-Christoph Blumenberg tells about the rise and fall of Reinhold Schünzel. The grandiose Peter Fitz mimes a charming, witty and ambitious director. By letting some performers play several roles, Blumenberg cleverly illustrates the recurring conditions with which Reinhold Schünzel faces everywhere. Schünzel's irony, language joke and sophistication in particular congenially transfers Blumenberg to his film.

Schtonk! is a farce of the actual events of 1983, when Germany's Stern magazine published, with great fanfare, 60 volumes of the alleged diaries of Adolf Hitler – which two weeks later turned out to be entirely fake. Fritz Knobel (based on real-life forger Konrad Kujau) supports himself by faking and selling Nazi memorabilia. When Knobel writes and sells a volume of Hitler's (nonexistent) diaries, he thinks it's just another job. When sleazy journalist Hermann Willié learns of the diaries, however, he quickly realizes their potential value... and Knobel is quickly in over his head. As the pressure builds and Knobel is forced to deliver more and more volumes of the fake diaries, he finds himself acting increasingly like the man whose life he is rewriting. The film is a romping and hilarious satire, poking fun not only at the events and characters involved in the hoax (who are only thinly disguised in the film), but at the discomfort Germany has with its difficult past.

A black comedy about the dream of freedom and the difficulty of obtaining this: While Molly (Eva Mattes), Elisabeth (Katja Flint) and Maria (Ornella Muti) are great friends, but at the same time completely different. Molly is a difficult stressed housewife and mother of three children, Elisabeth is the perfect career woman and Maria uses already in their third marriage sex appeal to get ahead in life. But one day it turns out that the three except their friendship still connects another great thing in common: They are all tired of her life as a wife. And so begins the story of a rabenscharzen comedy about the dream of freedom and the difficulties to achieve this. The only question is: How are they merely their husbands going on?

After fleeing from Nazi Germany, Josef and Helen Schwarz arrive in Portugal's capital in 1942, where a ship to America awaits them. But on the evening before the ship departs, Helen dies in the hotel. She had concealed the cancer from her husband so as not to burden their last days together. Deeply affected and disillusioned, Josef is drawn to the port of Lisbon. There he meets a penniless exile to whom he is willing to give the ship's tickets and visas, which have now become worthless to him, if he accompanies him that night and listens to his story.

After World War II, Jürgen Godeysen ends up in a hospital, wounded and traumatized. There, the young Nicoline reads to him from the diaries of his father, Michael. The entries chronicle his life and loves, from the moment he first encountered his first love as a young ensign in Berlin at the turn of the century, to the moment he returned from World War I broken and with no will to live.

Germany in the Thirties. A movie teller realizes that his profession is not longer needed. Silent movies are not produced any longer. Telling stories is the only thing the man was ever good in, so he does not know what to do now. As political circumstances are changing dramatically these days in Germany, he gets new hope that things will again be going better for him...

In the second part of the drama, the wounded Jürgen hears about the happy years his father Michael spent with his wife Bim at the "Fohlenhof." He learns how the war took everything from him and how Michael was nearly broken by the death of his beloved Bim, who died while giving birth to Jürgen. It was only through his favorite horse that he began to believe in life again and fight for his son.

Italy gives sponsors the choice between banishment and prison. Mario Adorf decides to go into exile.

'Please help me!' the young GDR refugee begs the passengers of the interzonal train 'D 106'. He has just jumped on the night train during an unforeseen stop - to get to the west as quickly as possible. He can't go back, and in less than an hour they reach the German-German border - without stopping. The passengers meanwhile begin to ask themselves serious questions: Am I helping the young man and risking my own safety? Or is that too dangerous for me? While people are racking their brains, not only is the train racing away, but time is too ...

A married university professor ends his explosive affair with a female student who then accuses him of sexual harassment. A satire with plenty of situation comedy about a misstep with consequences!

In the late 1970s the German secret service fights against RAF terrorism and searches for constitutional enemies in the public service. Teacher Brasch implicates secret service agent Körner and the government in the suicide of a young teen. As a result Brasch and the exposed Körner are fired.

In this war drama, three Nazi survivors are rescued after their battleship sank. Initially they are given heroes' accolades for their courage, but then it becomes apparent that these men actually jumped ship three hours before the boat sank. The men are tried and subsequently executed.

What to do if you are stuck as a police officer in a boring small town, no decent crimes happen and you should actually make the big career at the instigation of your wife? In this lamentable situation is Heinrich Karpf. An unfine plan is supposed to bring about the change: where there is no spectacular case, one must be faked...

A woman as mayor is quite unusual in Germany in the 1950s, but Dr. Fanny Becker is a lawyer with experience in local politics, which is why she gets elected mayor of Rosenburg.

Derrick was a German TV series produced by Telenova Film und Fernsehproduktion in association with ZDF, ORF and SRG between 1974 and 1998 about Detective Chief Inspector Stephan Derrick and his loyal assistant Inspector Harry Klein, who solve murder cases in Munich and surroundings.

Die fünfte Kolonne is a German television series.

Family saga set in 19th century Germany, chronicling the lives of three generations of the Buddenbrook family, the owners of a family business in the northern town of Luebeck. Based on the novel by Thomas Mann.

Follows two wealthy families in Germany during the first half of the 20th century. One of them is German, the other one Jewish.

The life of a family in Germany between 1920s and 1940s.

Reconstruction of the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg and the following farcical military court procedures.

In the 23rd century, it is no longer necessary to work thanks to the latest technology. Convicts do the work that still needs to be done. The World Leisure Center uses a computer system to decide how people spend their free time. World citizen number DARK 7035 7201 is called Prun. Although an examination shows that his IQ is too low for him to have a child of his own, he becomes the father of Botho. Because it is a "black birth", he has to keep Botho hidden from now on. Prun comes into contact with the so-called "semi-intelligentsia", who oppose the government.