
22 Sep 2019

Karajan: Portrait of a Maestro
An account of the life and work of controversial German orchestra conductor Herbert von Karajan (1908-89), celebrated as one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century.
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Narrator
22 Sep 2019
An account of the life and work of controversial German orchestra conductor Herbert von Karajan (1908-89), celebrated as one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century.
19 Jun 2008
The film accompanies Jenny Gröllmann, a German actress, during the last two years of her life.
01 Jan 1990
Documentary film with play scenes about the rise and fall of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919 from the perspective of various well-known poets and writers who experienced the events as contemporary witnesses.
31 Dec 1986
Short biographical documentary about the life of Alfred Florstedt and his life as a progressive communist from the Weimar Republic to his death in 1985.
20 Jul 1950
Documentary (in colour) about the first youth meeting (Deutschlandtreffen der Jugend) in East Berlin in 1950.
01 Jun 2014
No overview found
30 Oct 1992
The life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who survived the Nazi reign as a trans woman and helped start the German gay liberation movement. Documentary with some dramatized scenes. Two actors play the young and middle aged Charlotte and she plays herself in the later years.
02 Jan 1991
Journalist Daniela Dahn interviews the East-German author Christa Wolf during the German reunification: reflections on history, changing politics, life and work.
24 Nov 2022
Driven by extensive archive material and interviews with those who know her, this is the astonishing story of how a triple outsider – a woman, a scientist, and an East German – became the de facto leader of the “Free World”, told for the first time for an international audience.
01 Oct 2008
Former "Titanic" satire magazine editor Martin Sonneborn takes an undercover trip around Berlin and discovers the East-German mentality and what is left of the socialist German Democratic Republic.
17 Nov 2023
No overview found
08 Aug 2001
It was the biggest escape in the history of the Berlin Wall: in one historic night of October 1964, 57 East-Berliners try their luck through a tunnel into West Berlin. Just before the last few reach the other side, the East German border guards notice the escape and open fire. Remarkably, all the refugees and their escape agents make it out of the tunnel unscathed, but one border guard is dead: 21-year-old officer Egon Schultz.
13 Feb 2007
A documentary on the late American entertainer Dean Reed, who became a huge star in East Germany after settling there in 1973.
02 Nov 2009
No overview found
13 Jul 2021
On October 10, 2005, Angela Merkel becomes German Chancellor. After 16 years, she now wants to clear the field. We take a look back at the many different faces of our Chancellor. In addition to Wolfgang Bosbach, Gregor Gysi and Kai Diekmann, extreme mountaineer Reinhold Messner, presenter Nina Eichinger, comedian Wigald Boning, former minister Annette Schavan, former President of the Bundestag Nobert Lammert, actress Uschi Glas and entrepreneur Gloria von Thurn und Taxis share their very personal views.
11 Feb 2006
In the documentary Last To Know political prisoners, sent to jail for openly opposing the East German regime that existed until the German reunification in 1990, talk about their times of trial and their lives today. Neither they, nor their families have come to terms with what happened.
22 Jul 2021
13 August 1961: the GDR closes the sector borders in Berlin. The city is divided overnight. Escape to the West becomes more dangerous every day. But on September 14, 1962, exactly one year, one month and one day after the Wall was built, a group of 29 people from the GDR managed to escape spectacularly through a 135-meter tunnel to the West. For more than 4 months, students from West Berlin, including 2 Italians, dug this tunnel. When the tunnel builders ran out of money after only a few meters of digging, they came up with the idea of marketing the escape tunnel. They sell the film rights to the story exclusively to NBC, an American television station.
01 Jan 2007
Documentary about the end of the regency of Kaiser Wilhelm II., Germany's last emperor.
16 Jan 2024
Sexual minorities were oppressed, imprisoned and murdered by the Nazis. Paragraph 175 criminalized homosexual men during the Nazi era – but the Nazis also discriminated against lesbians and trans people. They should be excluded from the national community. More than 50,000 queer people have been proven to have been persecuted. The documentary highlights three poignant fates in the context of Nazi terror.
26 Sep 2018
When people think of DEFA, the film heritage of the GDR, they probably don't just think of film images, but also some of the timeless melodies that were created in Babelsberg.