Wolfgang Winkler

A young soldier enters Germany with Soviet troops at the end of WWII, feeling like a stranger in his homeland. As he meets Germans, he grapples with his ambivalence, realizing he is both a victor and one of the vanquished. His inquisitive nature leads him to confront the atrocities and lies he encounters along the way.

East Berlin, 1989: 30-year-old photojournalist Georg follows a beautiful, mysterious dancer Miss Albena. Blinded by love, he dreams about her. His imagination and reality – a world in the midst of radical social change – get mixed up.

East-Berlin, 1961, shortly after the erection of the Wall. Konrad, Sophie and three of their friends plan a daring escape to Western Germany. The attempt is successful, except for Konrad, who remains behind. From then on, and for the next 28 years, Konrad and Sophie will attempt to meet again, in spite of the Iron Curtain. Konrad, who has become a reputed Astrophysicist, tries to take advantage of scientific congresses outside Eastern Germany to arrange encounters with Sophie. But in a country where the political police, the Stasi, monitors the moves of all suspicious people (such as Konrad's sister Barbara and her husband Harald), preserving one's privacy, ideals and self-respect becomes an exhausting fight, even as the Eastern block begins its long process of disintegration.

Max Stricker, an old anti-fascist, informs a class of eighth graders before their planned visit to the former concentration camp in Buchenwald. But the boys and girls are not very interested in Max′s lecture and instead stop his lecture with their constant interferences. On the trip to Buchenwald, the class roughnecks around wannabe hoodlum King also want to cause trouble. Thus, a small group of pupils secretly leaves the train before it arrives. Max notices the runaways, follows them, and offers them a bet: He challenges them to get to Weimar on their own, with only five Marks left.

Jessi finds the petrified talking heart of a pirate who died centuries ago. The pirate's dream image increasingly becomes a substitute for her father. When her father turns up one day, she has to decide between her childish hopes and her burgeoning adulthood...

Dr. Michael Mangold is truly enviable: He works successfully as a surgeon in a Leipzig clinic, has a fancy apartment, is very good-looking and is about to be promoted to chief physician. Then his best friend Dr. Jörg Klein asks him for help. Dr. Klein runs a practice in the countryside and is looking for a replacement for two weeks so that he can attend a congress in Stockholm. Michael accepts and is looking forward to the change. But as soon as he arrives in the idyllic setting, his peace and quiet comes to an end: he falls head over heels in love with the beautiful policewoman Lena Stern - Dr. Klein's future wife!

Maria, a young student sees her brother Dieter going to prison for sedition against the state. She starts an affair with Paul, a judge who turns out to be the one who sentenced her brother, which eventually leads to a confrontation.

Twenty-year-old electronics technician Liane, desperate to escape her broken home, resists a demotion at work and falls for research student Jürgen. Fiercely defending colleague Kalle against unfair accusations, she overshadows her own troubles, including an unplanned pregnancy. When Jürgen betrays her, Liane collapses, and she wonders if a new beginning with steadfast Kalle is possible.