Margarethe von Trotta

Sisters, or The Balance of Happiness

Sisters Maria and Anna live together. Maria is a most proficient executive secretary, encouraging Anna to finish her studies and start a career. Anna broods, threatens to quit university, takes pills, and keeps a diary. When Maria's relationship with Maurice, the son of her boss, starts to lead to love, Anna takes a selfish and drastic step that plummets Maria into solitude. No longer able to connect with Maurice, Maria does establish a relationship with Miriam, a typist at her office who becomes a surrogate younger sister. But Maria is intrusive as well as helpful. Can this or any relationship work out for this talented woman whose past seems to choke her soul?

Sister

All her life, 80-year-old Margot Brunner (Rosemarie Fendel) has lived with her disabled sister Wilma (Cornelia Froboess) in the apartment of their deceased mother. The grove Wilma seizes every opportunity she gets to be a nuisance to her sister. When Margot meets artist Gregor (Matthias Habich), she finally gets the courage to tell her sister that she wants to enjoy her life and get out of the house. But Wilma does not agree with this.

Circle of Deceit

To escape his crumbling marriage, German journalist Laschen travels to Beirut during the fights between Christians and Palestinians to produce an essay. Together with his photographer, he meets some influential people and discovers the everyday face of the war.

Searching for Ingmar Bergman

A meaningful account of the personal and professional life of the great Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) that explores his film legacy, with interviews with his closest collaborators and a new generation of filmmakers.

Coup de Grâce

A countess loves her brother's Prussian-officer friend in the 1919 Baltic area.

Beer Chase

A man who is dissatisfied with his senseless existence in his family-life and social status steals the uniform of a policeman and then enters the Oktoberfest. Now he is somebody, he is important, he can help, people respect him, etc. His wife, other relatives and some friends start to follow him while he gets some new acquaintances.

Sheer Madness

Two women–a literature professor and a painter–start to rely upon their friendship as an alternative to their unhappy relationships with the men in their lives.

Hannah Arendt

A portrait of the genius that shook the world with her discovery of “the banality of evil.” After she attends the Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, Arendt dares to write about the Holocaust in terms no one has ever heard before. Her work instantly provokes a furious scandal, and Arendt stands strong as she is attacked by friends and foes alike. But as the German-Jewish émigré also struggles to suppress her own painful associations with the past, the film exposes her beguiling blend of arrogance and vulnerability — revealing a soul defined and derailed by exile.

Sisters, or The Balance of Happiness

Sisters Maria and Anna live together. Maria is a most proficient executive secretary, encouraging Anna to finish her studies and start a career. Anna broods, threatens to quit university, takes pills, and keeps a diary. When Maria's relationship with Maurice, the son of her boss, starts to lead to love, Anna takes a selfish and drastic step that plummets Maria into solitude. No longer able to connect with Maurice, Maria does establish a relationship with Miriam, a typist at her office who becomes a surrogate younger sister. But Maria is intrusive as well as helpful. Can this or any relationship work out for this talented woman whose past seems to choke her soul?

Sister

All her life, 80-year-old Margot Brunner (Rosemarie Fendel) has lived with her disabled sister Wilma (Cornelia Froboess) in the apartment of their deceased mother. The grove Wilma seizes every opportunity she gets to be a nuisance to her sister. When Margot meets artist Gregor (Matthias Habich), she finally gets the courage to tell her sister that she wants to enjoy her life and get out of the house. But Wilma does not agree with this.

Circle of Deceit

To escape his crumbling marriage, German journalist Laschen travels to Beirut during the fights between Christians and Palestinians to produce an essay. Together with his photographer, he meets some influential people and discovers the everyday face of the war.

Searching for Ingmar Bergman

A meaningful account of the personal and professional life of the great Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) that explores his film legacy, with interviews with his closest collaborators and a new generation of filmmakers.

Coup de Grâce

A countess loves her brother's Prussian-officer friend in the 1919 Baltic area.

Beer Chase

A man who is dissatisfied with his senseless existence in his family-life and social status steals the uniform of a policeman and then enters the Oktoberfest. Now he is somebody, he is important, he can help, people respect him, etc. His wife, other relatives and some friends start to follow him while he gets some new acquaintances.

Sheer Madness

Two women–a literature professor and a painter–start to rely upon their friendship as an alternative to their unhappy relationships with the men in their lives.

Hannah Arendt

A portrait of the genius that shook the world with her discovery of “the banality of evil.” After she attends the Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, Arendt dares to write about the Holocaust in terms no one has ever heard before. Her work instantly provokes a furious scandal, and Arendt stands strong as she is attacked by friends and foes alike. But as the German-Jewish émigré also struggles to suppress her own painful associations with the past, the film exposes her beguiling blend of arrogance and vulnerability — revealing a soul defined and derailed by exile.

Brandstifter

Anka, a student active in the extra-parliamentary opposition, has had enough of inconsequential discussions. As she no longer believes that she can change the world with words alone, she plans a militant action: as a protest against the Vietnam War, she plants a bomb in a Cologne department store to force the public into a debate.

I Am the Other Woman

Successful architect Robert has a one-night stand with a mysterious lady in red. The next day they meet again, but Carolin is now a corporate lawyer working on a major contract for Robert ...

Germany in Autumn

Nine fictitious documentaries and films reflect the mood of late 1970s Germany, particularly the two-month period in 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped by the RAF (Red Army Faction). The kidnap had been made to orchestrate the release of the original leaders of the RAF, aka the Baader-Meinhof.

Gian Luigi Rondi - Vita, cinema, passione

Marianne and Juliane

Germany, 1968: The priest's daughters Marianna and Juliane both fight for changes in society, like making abortion legal. However their means are totally different: while Juliane's committed as a reporter, her sister joins a terroristic organization. After she's caught by the police and put into isolation jail, Juliane remains as her last connection to the rest of the world. Although she doesn't accept her sister's arguments and her boyfriend Wolfgang doesn't want her to, Juliane keeps on helping her sister. She begins to question the way her sister is treated.

The Long Silence

Carla Aldrovandi, a gynecologist, and her husband Marco Canova, a magistrate live on the front line of criminal and political powers in Italy. She is surrounded by terror and threats.

A Free Woman

A divorced thirtysomething woman fights a losing battle in Munich to attain belated self-fulfillment. The die is cast in a briskly impersonal society geared to male dominance and early training for career women.

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum

After a chance encounter with a wanted man, a woman is harassed by the police and press until she takes violent action.

Das Andechser Gefühl

An anxious teacher (played, as is the lead role in all his films, by the director) sits in a beer garden on the hill of the Andechs monastery. While flies drown in his mug of beer, he confronts a life of failure: the wife he ignored, the child he neglected, the teaching duties he has shirked, and his doomed efforts at winning tenure from school officials. Only a dream from the past-the memory of a former liaison with a film star with whom he shared "the Andechs feeling, a feeling that we are not alone" - provides sustenance. Despite an unexpected series of events, longing in Achternbusch's world ultimately remains stronger than fulfilment and thirst better than beer.

Rosa Luxemburg: Der Preis der Freiheit

One hundred years after the assassination of German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), we look back at the struggles of this pioneer of the Workers' International.

The Other Woman

A German couple travels, shortly after reunification, to the Netherlands. Happiness does not last long. The wife receives a letter from an unknown woman.

Calling the Shots

Documentary about women in the film industry. Numerous notable actresses and female directors share their thoughts.

Rosa Luxemburg

Polish socialist and Marxist Rosa Luxemburg works tirelessly in the service of revolution in early 20th century Poland and Germany. While Luxemburg campaigns for her beliefs, she is repeatedly imprisoned as she forms the Spartacist League offering a new vision for Germany.

Love and Fear

Three sisters, played by Fanny Ardant, Greta Scacchi and Valeria Golino, struggle with their illusions, goals and desires in Margarethe von Trotta’s film adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s play.

Cinématon

Cinématon is a 156-hour long experimental film by French director Gérard Courant. It was the longest film ever released until 2011. Composed over 36 years from 1978 until 2006, it consists of a series of over 2,821 silent vignettes (cinématons), each 3 minutes and 25 seconds long, of various celebrities, artists, journalists and friends of the director, each doing whatever they want for the allotted time. Subjects of the film include directors Barbet Schroeder, Nagisa Oshima, Volker Schlöndorff, Ken Loach, Benjamin Cuq, Youssef Chahine, Wim Wenders, Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Samuel Fuller and Terry Gilliam, chess grandmaster Joël Lautier, and actors Roberto Benigni, Stéphane Audran, Julie Delpy and Lesley Chatterley. Gilliam is featured eating a 100-franc note, while Fuller smokes a cigar. Courant's favourite subject was a 7-month-old baby. The film was screened in its then-entirety in Avignon in November 2009 and was screened in Redondo Beach, CA on April 9, 2010.

Sympathisanten - Unser deutscher Herbst

West Germany in the 1970s. Many artists, journalists and intellectuals were branded as sympathizers of Baader-Meinhof's left-wing terrorism. The parents of the director, too: Margarethe von Trotta and his stepfather, Volker Schlöndorff. With extensive archive materials and film clips as well as Margarethe von Trotta's private diaries the film portrays one German family and the society of the time.

Scene of the Crime

Tatort is a long-running German/Austrian/Swiss crime television series set in various parts of these countries. The show is broadcast on the channels of ARD in Germany, ORF in Austria and SF1 in Switzerland.

NDR Talk Show

Kölner Treff

The Commissioner

Der Kommissar is a German television series about a group of detectives of the Munich homicide squad. All 97 episodes, which were shot in black-and-white and first broadcast between 1969 and 1976, were written by Herbert Reinecker and starred Erik Ode as Kommissar Herbert Keller. Keller's assistants were Walter Grabert, Robert Heines, and Harry Klein who, in 1974, was replaced by his younger brother Erwin Klein.

Square

Zeugen des Jahrhunderts

Motiv Liebe

Motiv Liebe is a German television series.

Unter einem Dach

Unter einem Dach is a German television series.

Ein Fall für Männdli

Jahrestage

Gesine Cresspahl, who lives in New York, tells her eleven-year-old daughter Marie the family history during the period 1967–1968. In flashbacks, she describes the time in Germany before and during National Socialism and the early GDR. In doing so, she also draws on events that took place before her birth. Important stages in the narrative are the following aspects: On Kristallnacht, Gesine's mother commits suicide, her father spies for the British Army during the war and is imprisoned by the Soviets for several years in the Fünfeichen camp after the war ends. After the founding of the GDR, Gesine and her lover Jakob are pressured by the Stasi because they refuse to carry out certain assignments. Eventually, Gesine emigrates to West Germany and then to the USA.

Ciné regards