Exploring the Brandenburg Marche(1982)

Berlin am Meer(de)

The Class(fr)

Teacher and novelist François Bégaudeau plays a version of himself as he negotiates a year with his racially mixed students from a tough Parisian neighborhood.

Shadowlands(en)

C.S. Lewis, a world-renowned writer and professor, leads a passionless life until he meets spirited poet Joy Gresham.

Eastern Cross(de)

OSTKREUZ tells the episodic story of 15-year-old Elfie, who literally and metaphorically inhabits a no-man’s-land between the two Germanies shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The film deploys a neorealist aesthetic to reinforce the difficulties confronting the girl, and by inference, Germany.

Heroes Like Us(de)

A young man from an early age falls in love with a girl whose family is not in good standing with the ruling Communist party. His father however is a member of the "Stasi", the secret state police. The father not only hinders his son's relationship with the girl, but he arranges for his son, after finishing school, to become a Stasi spy himself.

1-2-3 Corona(de)

Post-war Germany 1945: Two rival gangs of uprooted boys fight each other in the ruins of Berlin, whose business is the black market out of necessity in order to survive. Their respective leaders are Gerhard and Dietrich. A pretty young circus artist named Corona comes to the destroyed city with a traveling circus. She immediately caught the boys' attention. When the latter notice that the circus director is abusing the girl, the two gangs join forces and plot an act of revenge against the tyrant. But with the hustle and bustle caused by this, Corona falls from the trapeze and is seriously injured. When the circus moves on, the boys organize a doctor for the sick artist who has been left behind. Their collectively concern for the blonde beauty makes them forget their enmity. This welds the troops closer together and sets the course for a common, meaningful future.

Love in Thoughts(de)

A posthumous look at the last days of Guenther's life as he, his best friend, and his sister let loose on a four-day binge of alcohol, drugs, and sex.

The Sandman(en)

One of several collaborative dance films by the Brothers Quay & (dancer, choreographer) William Tuckett. Little enough info around on line, but there's briefly by way of Wikipedia entry. Adapted rather loosely from the works of the E.T.A. Hoffman. Familiar Quays' tropes, much in evidence: automata, trompe l'oeil effects, etc. No credit on the sound design (which is fairly elaborate), tho' that is possibly Larry Sider.

The Tunnel(de)

Inspired by true events, Olympic swimmer Harry Melchior defects from East Germany in the 1960s and hatches a daring plot to help his sister and others flee East Berlin through a 145-yard underground tunnel.

Der Tunnel(en)

The Magic Mountain(de)

Hans Castorp, fresh from university and about to become a civil engineer, comes to the Sanatorium Berghof in the Swiss Alps to visit his cousin Joachim, an army officer, who is recovering there from tuberculosis. Intending to remain at the Berghof for three weeks, Hans is gradually contaminated by the morbid atmosphere pervading the place. Wishing very much to be considered a patient like the others, he achieves his ends and stays in the sanatorium for ...seven years. During this time, he has enough time to take part in the furious philosophical debates pitting against each other Settembrini, a secular humanist, and Naphta, a totalitarian Jesuit. And to fall in love with the beautiful but enigmatic Clawdia Chauchat. When he is finally discharged in 1914 - along with all the other patients - it is only to plunge into the horrors of World War I.

En Route(de)

A slightly sinister but charming young man falls in with a young mother and daughter and her boyfriend on a camping holiday and leads them astray.

Sombras Brancas(pt)

At the age of 71, a highly regarded writer, José Cardoso Pires, suffers a major stroke and loses his memory and the ability to relate to the rest of the world. Everybody seems to defy the famous author to write another novel that recounts this adventure telling his "last story", the most conclusive of his career, the one of his accidental journey to the clear shadows territory.

The Saverini Widow(fr)

Bonifacio 1883, extreme south of Corsica. The widow of the late Saverini lives in an isolated house near the cliffs, with her only son Antoine, and her dog. During the day, she assists women giving birth in town. One night her son is killed in a clash. The murderer flees to Sardinia. Her world falls to pieces.

Two Among Millions(de)

Capote(en)

A biopic of writer Truman Capote and his assignment for The New Yorker to write the non-fiction book "In Cold Blood".

Hello Hemingway(es)

The plot, set in Havana in the last period of Fulgencio Batista's dictatorship, follows a young girl whose aspirations to obtain a scholarship in America, against the odds, are paralleled with her reading of Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea".

Heavenly Creatures(en)

Precocious teenager Juliet moves to New Zealand with her family and soon befriends the quiet, brooding Pauline through their shared love of fantasy and literature. This friendship gradually develops into an intense and obsessive bond.

Stranger Than Fiction(en)

Harold Crick is a lonely IRS agent whose mundane existence is transformed when he hears a mysterious voice narrating his life.

Huckleberry Finn: A Close Place(en)

Transposing Mark Twain's immortal anti-racist novel to 2017, "Huckleberry Finn: A Close Place" depicts the friendship that develops between a poor Missouri boy and an undocumented African immigrant as they drift down the Mississippi River on a makeshift raft in pursuit of freedom.