The Olympic Champion

Hades

This German political drama from iconoclastic filmmaker Herbert Achternbusch takes a slightly askew look at neo-Nazis and the Holocaust. His non-story (a typical trait of Achternbusch films) is divided into three parts. The first introduces Hades, an eccentric half-Jewish coffin maker. Also introduced are the women in his life. The second part depicts different scenes from the city's Jewish ghetto. Included are disturbing film clips from Nazi propaganda footage that shows the naked corpses of starved Jews piled up in the streets with the insinuation that the heartless relatives of the dead would unceremoniously toss them out when they expired. In the third part, Hades is buried at sea. In between, neo-Nazis march unopposed in Munich, Hades battles skinheads, and Hades' shop is repeatedly vandalized. A scene where Hades is fascinated with death is also seen.

Mixwix

The story of the owner of the Mix Wix department store, who has successfully done business with underwear and socks and even has the largest selection of underwear. Since Mix Wix cannot improve further in this segment, it would like to expand its line to include tennis clothing. To do this, however, he needs additional commercial space, for which he must wait for the building permit. Mix Wix spends the time waiting on the rooftop of the bar, wondering if his current existence represents meaningful life.

Der junge Mönch

Bavaria has become an arctic, hostile environment; at the site of the former state capital, a huge geyser is now gushing through the ice sheet. Miraculously, the home village where the young monk Herbert lives has been spared from the catastrophe. Now he propagates his religion, in which a chocolate Easter bunny is worshipped and whose central commandment is "God must not be bitten". In a surrealistic style, images from Iceland and Munich are mixed with images of the Easter bunny and the Pope.

Rita Ritter

A writer tries unsuccessfully to sell his screenplays and plays. He marries a television editor, but she only wants to fuck him and thinks nothing of his work. He then remembers his old Parisian lover Rita, calls himself Rita from then on and becomes her wife. When a French director stages a play of his, he meets Rita again in Paris and the two women become a happy couple.

Der Neger Erwin

A filmmaker (Achternbusch) is just released from prison and has to make a living with his craft again. He is followed by a reporter who wants an interview and winds up at an inn called "Zum Neger Erwin," run by a woman whom he convinces to be the leading lady in his planned production. As the story continues, the filmmaker finds ample excuses to pan the financial powers that be and to paint the benighted and talented seekers after funds as slaves to the funding process.

Der Komantsche

After several years in a coma, the Comanche, an Indian, wakes up in a Bavarian hospital. But reality does not match the dreams he had of it during his coma: it seems bleak and barren to him. The Comanche shows the audience his view of everyday life in Germany, with a collage of images and language demonstrating the absurdity of this reality.

Der Depp

Voted for in Sight & Sound's 2022 Greatest Films of all time poll.

Punch Drunk

Dr. Riesenhuber, the State Secretary of the Bavarian Ministry of Culture, can think of nothing else but advancing his career and becoming a minister, despite the world being contaminated by nuclear radiation.

The Atlantic Swimmers

Munich Heinz and Herbert wants to escape the torturous confines of their home by swimming across the Atlantic.

Neue Freiheit - Keine Jobs Schönes München: Stillstand

Chancellor Helmut Kohl is to blame in Germany and has to go away without violence. The homeless Hick takes up the idea and demonstrates the abolition of Kohl.

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.

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

The film follows Kaspar Hauser, who lived the first seventeen years of his life chained in a tiny cellar with only a toy horse to occupy his time, devoid of all human contact except for a man who wears a black overcoat and top hat who feeds him.

Picasso in Munich

In this surrealist film director Picasso can awaken from the dead. He steals a paintings painted by himself of a couple of wealthy psychiatrists. When Picasso meets Takla Bash, a patient of the psychiatrists, Picasso falls in love. Although it is his own daughter, he remembers an incredible love affair, in which a film with a blue cow plays a role. In the majority of the paintings shown in the film are works of Herbert Achternbusch.

The Ghost

Jesus returns to present-day Bavaria, walks around Munich in a somewhat dazed manner and strikes up an affair with a nun, arguing that they are married anyway. Therefore, he refers to himself as "Ober" (waiter), obviously the male form of "Oberin" (Mother Superior). He occasionally transforms into a snake when being afraid and is finally carried up into the sky by the nun, who transforms into a bird of prey.

Heart of Glass

A small Bavarian village is renowned for its "Ruby Glass" glass blowing works. When the foreman of the works dies suddenly without revealing the secret of the Ruby Glass, the town slides into a deep depression, and the owner of the glassworks becomes obssessed with the lost secret.

Ab nach Tibet!

An anarchist surrealist film.