Werner Grassmann

A man tells a strange tale about a hotel he once visited.

Berlin Film Fest 1984. The best place for every cinema fan. Everyone wants to be in on the festival, but that may be really difficult, if one has no accreditation. Also Journalist Matthies gets to know the rules of being in or out when he wants to see a screening and is not welcome. Thus he watches an old German silent flick which he is barely interested in. The next day the newspapers are full of reports about a newly discovered German masterpiece from the silent era. It seems that Matthies had luck. He just saw *the* film everybody is talking about now. Also everybody is speculating about its director, who remains unknown. When Matthies talks to Ackrewa, an old befriended projectionist, about the film, the latter seems to recall the name of the director. Matthies decides to research the case. An odyssey into film-history begins and if it is successful Matthies will come up with a top story.

Rosa von Praunheim is an icon in the scene: gay activist, loving provocateur and a very special filmmaker from Berlin for decades. His curiosity for people and their fates runs through his extensive film work. For his 70th birthday he has now made 70 new short films. In the first part of the big project, he confronts Thilo Sarrazin with the mayor of Neukölln, Heinz Buschkowsky, and the Turkish lawyer and women's rights activist Seyran Ates; shows a homosexual hustler in Bucharest; gossip reporter Andreas Kurtz, who knows everything about Berlin's celebrities; Rosa's neighbors who live with her dependent brother; Esther Bauer, who survived Auschwitz, and the Berlin comedian Ades Zabel. High on the roofs of Berlin, the gay chimney sweep Alain Rappsilber tells him about his fetish leather meeting Folsom.

A Soviet sailor travels to the West for the first time. In Hamburg, he hopes to find his missing brother. But German secret service agents, inquisitive reporters and even his own countrymen are hot on his heels.