Reflected in an artificial and bombastically staged illusory world with Wagnerian compositions, glossy and satirical time references, 19th century German figures and traditions are stripped of their mythology and interpreted by the Germany of 1972.
Social & External
The people behind it
Harry Baer
Ludwig II
Ingrid Caven
Lola Montez
Peter Kern
Lakai Mayr / Hoffriseur Hoppe / Röhm
Monica Bleibtreu
Elisabeth Ney
Gert Haucke
Baron Freyschlag
Günther Kaufmann
Graf Holnstein
Hanna Köhler
Sissi
Ursula Strätz
Mme Bulyowski
Gerhard Maerz
Richard Wagner #1
Anette Tirier
Richard Wagner #2
David Marshall Williams is sent to a prison farm where he works in the tool shop and eventually develops the precursor of the famous M-1 Carbine automatic rifle used in World War II.
At age ten, Paolo asks his mother he wants to meet his father, an unknown soccer player who retired early due to an injury. The boy does not know it, but the reunion with his father and with his discipline, incites in him a change of character that will turn him into the professional soccer player that all Peruvians know well; the warrior, the fighter. Paolo with the help of his neighborhood friends and with all the support from his mother, manages to overcome obstacles and fulfill his dream.
A poignant biography of one of the most successful and wildly-read writers of the 20th century. Her stories enthralled children everywhere but her personal struggles often proved too much.
For two brilliant young athletes - Roger Bannister of England and John Landy of Australia - the 1952 Helsinki Olympics present an exciting challenge. But events help set them on the path to something even more memorable than an Olympic gold medal - the race to break the four-minute mile....
The Singer is a film about the all-time favourite singer in Finland, Olavi Virta. A man who rose from poverty all the way to the top and became an artist who was dearly loved by the Finnish people. A man who loved beautiful women and was loved by beautiful women. A man who enjoyed speed, American cars, applause and alcohol and who finally lost everything but his unique voice.
Abe Lincoln in Illinois is a 1940 biographical film which tells the story of the life of Abraham Lincoln from his departure from Kentucky until his election as President of the United States.
The life story of Anagarika Dharmapala. He was a Sri Lankan Buddhist revivalist and writer. He was one of the founding contributors of non-violent Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalism and Buddhism. He was also a pioneer in the revival of Buddhism in India after it had been virtually extinct there for several centuries, and he was the first Buddhist in modern times to preach the Dharma in three continents: Asia, North America, and Europe. He was a major reformer and revivalist of Ceylonese Buddhism and a crucial figure in its Western transmission. Dharmapala is one of the most revered Buddhists in the 20th century.
Hülya is a young German-Turkish writer. Several years after the death of her father, she decides to write a novel about him. In order to get to know him better, she travels to Damal, the place where her father was born and grew up. She meets the people from his youth and reconstructs his life there - at school, at home and in the expansive landscape around the village. While she observes, she does not always get an equally positive picture of her father and the dramatic events that shaped his life and hers. Confusing memories fall into place. At the same time, present, past, reality and fantasy start mingling increasingly naturally and it becomes more and more clear that memory is a far-from-infallible instrument. Nature, idyllically one time and mercilessly next, forms the atmospheric decor for this reflection on the value of family bonds, love and honour.
Father Daens returns to Aalst, where workers suffer from poverty, child labor, and exploitation in the textile industry. Driven by his sense of justice, he takes their side, even if it means confronting the church and the upper class. A detailed historical drama about the fight for justice.
The true story of mountain climber Aron Ralston's remarkable adventure to save himself after a fallen boulder crashes on his arm and traps him in an isolated canyon in Utah.
The film tells the story of the payador José Betinotti, a mythical character in Argentine music. It faithfully reconstructs the scenarios of the early twentieth century: the workers' struggles, the party meetings of the caudillos and the circus criollo, the cradle of Argentine theater and music.
The woman who will become Catherine the Great marries into the Russian royal family when she weds Grand Duke Peter, the nephew of Empress Elizabeth. Although the couple has moments of contentment, Peter's cruel and erratic behavior causes a rift between him and Catherine. Mere months after Peter succeeds his aunt as the ruler of Russia, a revolt is brewing, and Catherine is poised to ascend to the throne as the country's new empress.
Eetu Salin, a fiery working-class agitator and one of the founders of the Finnish Social Democratic Party, struggles not only with his childhood traumas and alcoholism but also against young radical socialists within the party who are vying for power. Eetu, who advocates for class struggle through peaceful means, joins forces with his friends Väinö Tanner and Yrjö Mäkelin to try to prevent the Finnish working class from being drawn into a violent revolution.
After Gepeng's indiscipline, Srimulat's life in the capital suddenly turned upside down. The story of love, career and generations of legendary comedians continues!
Brecht's company of actors tells the story of Bertolt Brecht: his theatre, plays, poetry and his life.
A look a the life of 19th century Indian painter Raja Ravi Varma.
His opponents accused him of being homosexual. The male favorites he gathered around him during his short life gave those malevolent enemies solid arguments to do so. He would not have failed if he had proved himself to be an energetic king. But Edward II of England (1284-1327) never was a king like Edward I Longshanks, his father, or Edward III, his son, were. And his end is shrouded in myth and mystery.
CIA employee Edward Snowden leaks thousands of classified documents to the press.
Much to the devastation of his parents, a baby is born with a lung tumour. This is his moving tale of survival.
A fictional account of one year in the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. On Christmas Eve 1877, Elisabeth, once idolized for her beauty, turns 40 and is officially deemed an old woman; she starts trying to maintain her public image.
Electricity titans Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse compete to create a sustainable system and market it to the American people.
At the tense 1938 Munich Conference, former friends who now work for opposing governments become reluctant spies racing to expose a Nazi secret.
In autumn 1943, in Gross-Partsch, 26-year-old Rosa, who had come from Berlin to stay with the parents of her husband Gregor, who was fighting on the Russian front, was taken by the SS to a mysterious place. Forced to taste a dish, she joins the group of tasters responsible for checking that the food destined for Hitler is not poisoned.
Young women toiling in a factory are exposed to hazardous material which takes a disastrous toll on their health.
A story set in 19th century China and centered on the lifelong friendship between two girls who develop their own secret code as a way to contend with the rigid cultural norms imposed on women.
Jewish aesthete Cioma, 21, does not let anyone take away his joy of life, especially not the Nazis. In 1942, he has to find new ways to make his living in Berlin and escape deportation. In the process he discovers his talent for forgery: not only with passports, but also his own identity.
Follow-up to the TV trilogy “Heimat”, this time for cinemas, set again in the fictional village Schabbach in the Hunsrück region of Rhineland-Palatinate.
The warmhearted story of Polish immigrant and mathematician Stan Ulam, who moved to the U.S. in the 1930s. Stan deals with the difficult losses of family and friends all while helping to create the hydrogen bomb and the first computer.
At the behest of an old and dear friend, playwright Lillian Hellman undertakes a dangerous mission to smuggle funds into Nazi Germany.
Desperate to help her son, Rabiye Kurnaz, a housewife and loving mother from Bremen, goes to the police, notifies authorities and almost despairs at their impotence and in the end, against all the odds, something truly remarkable happens.
An American spy behind the lines during WWII serves as a Nazi propagandist, a role he cannot escape in his future life as he can never reveal his real role in the war.
Constance, 1410. Marie, daughter of the richest bourgeois of the city, is on the eve of marrying a prestigious lawyer, son of an earl. Although the compromise fills with pride the girl's father, anxious to ennoble, Marie is not just convinced about her fiancé, who she has only seen twice. Her suspicions are confirmed tragically on the eve of the wedding when, after signing the marriage contract, a stranger breaks into the house ensuring that Marie has slept with other men in exchange for gifts, like a vile harlot. From that moment, the life of the girl will give a terrible unexpected turnaround. Alone, with his reputation ruined, she will have no choice to survive than partnering with a prostitute and lying on the roads.
In this sprawling, fictionalized history of the Black Panthers, 1960s Oakland becomes a war zone as the Panthers battle for the right to exist.
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.
Taken into slavery after the fall of Jerusalem in 605 B.C., Daniel is forced to serve the most powerful king in the world, King Nebuchadnezzar. Faced with imminent death, Daniel proves himself a trusted Advisor and is placed among the king's wise men. Threatened by death at every turn Daniel never ceases to serve the king until he is forced to choose between serving the king or honoring God. With his life at stake, Daniel has nothing but his faith to stand between him and the lions' den.
The story of Margaret Humphreys, a social worker from Nottingham, who uncovers one of the most significant social scandals in recent times – the forced migration of children from the United Kingdom to Australia and other Commonwealth countries. Almost singlehandedly, Margaret reunited thousands of families, brought authorities to account and worldwide attention to an extraordinary miscarriage of justice.
The true story of Madalyn Murray O'Hair -- iconoclast, opportunist, and outspoken atheist -- from her controversial rise to her untimely demise.
An extravagant, exotic and moving look at Rembrandt's romantic and professional life, and the controversy he created by the identification of a murderer in the painting The Night Watch.
An unlikely friendship evolves over one wild night in LA between a struggling journalist and actor Hervé Villechaize, the world's most famous gun-toting dwarf, resulting in life-changing consequences for both.