Once Is Never

Film about the third 'Weltfestspiele der Jugend und Studenten für den Frieden' in East Berlin, 1951. West Germany is represented as a degenerate country which has been occupied by the Americans and is still inclined to fascism. We see the construction of the stadium, the departure and arrival of the delegations, the opening and closing by Enrico Berlinguer, a sports event, the parade of the delegations, a visit to Potsdam, folk dancing, and police violence against youngsters from West Berlin who want to visit East Germany because of the games. The film is interlaced with shots from the Korean War and a parade by NATO-troops in West Germany. Featuring Robert Montgomery, Konrad Adenauer, Wilhelm Pieck, Dwight Eisenhower, Robert Leer and Erich Honecker. The crew comprised no less than 24 cameramen. This project was the first great colour film Ivens co-operated in.

Stationed in a secluded Bulgarian village in 1943, Walter – a German Wehrmacht sergeant and artist – lives in almost idyllic distance from the war. Then a transit camp is set up for Jews arriving from Greece. When Ruth, one of the internees, asks Walter to help a pregnant woman, the two form an unlikely bond.

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.

A Jewish chief of surgery in 1933 Germany remains blind to the rising Nazi threat, dismissing political dissent from his son and a patient, until his family faces increasing anti-Semitic persecution.

"Busch singt" consists of 6 films "About the first part of our century" and does not present Ernst Busch only as a singer but is a film with and about Busch as a chronicler and fighter for communist ideals of his time. Konrad Wolf died during the production, he directed part 3 "1935 oder Das Faß der Pandora" and part 5 "Ein Toter auf Urlaub".

1933 year, Germany. The mother of worker kill nazis organizes pure resistance against political tyranny reigning in a country.

In 1930s Berlin, a woman’s life unravels as her unemployed husband succumbs to Nazi propaganda and joins the Storm Troopers, while her brother's anti-Nazi stance leads to his death, prompting her to confront her beliefs and make a risky choice.

Kemmel, a sculptor with a troubled nature, wonders, as he approaches his fortieth birthday, whether he has created any truly significant work.

After a breakdown, Rita returns to her childhood village in 1961. As she recovers, she remembers the past two years: her love for the chemist Manfred, ten years her senior; how his enthusiasm about his new chemical process turned to bitter disappointment in the face of official rejection; how he escaped to West Berlin a few weeks before the Wall was built and hoped that she would follow him …

Sunny is the singer of a band trying to establish itself in the East Berlin music scene. They play regular gigs in small towns, but Sunny feels out of touch with the audience and with her life as a whole. She begins a relationship with Ralph, an amateur saxophonist and philosophy student, who writes her a very personal song—but his obsession with death and unfaithful lifestyle are not for her. After getting into a quarrel with a band member who harasses her and telling off a show host, she is thrown out of the band. Abandoned, she struggles to regain control over her life.

Adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's novella for East German television, produced in 1965/66, not shown until 1972.

The authorities expect the case of Friedel Walter, alias "Dr. Mueller," to be a straightforward one: he was working as a doctor without proper credentials under a false name. But Mehlin, the man in charge of his case, knows that there is more to the story. When he was injured fleeing from a concentration camp, resistance worker Irene asked her medical student boyfriend Walter to give him medical care.

This film continues the story of radio operator Ludwig Bartuschek from “The Sailor’s Song”. Near the end of the Weimar Republic, Bartuschek (Erwin Geschonneck) is working as a mechanic in the Sperber airplane plant. Director Dehringer offers him the opportunity to train as an airplane constructor if he is willing to give up his communist beliefs under oath. Bartuschek will not allow himself to be bought and instead joins the underground resistance movement.

As a painter in the court of King Carlos IV, Goya has attained wealth and reputation. He believes in King and Church, yet he is also a Spaniard who dearly loves his people. This contradiction presents him with a dilemma.

A socialist story of "atoms for peace" and compulsory labor in an East German uranium mine under Soviet control.

In a Russian POW camp, four Germans determined to end WWII agree to pose as Red Army soldiers. Are they patriots or traitors, heroes or opportunists? Although they go to the frontlines, their new Russian comrades are initially unsure whether to trust them. Three of them then accept a mission behind German lines, but they are unprepared to fire upon their countrymen and it ends up costing the life of a Russian soldier. In the meantime, the fourth man has fallen in love with Russian radio operator Svetlana. After being criticized by the other Russians, he too agrees to participate in the mission..