Eva Mattes

A Russian and a German sniper play a game of cat-and-mouse during the Battle of Stalingrad in WWII.

After separating from her husband Medhi, Elodie’s life is thrown off balance. When she learns, while staying at her parents’ house, of an event from her early childhood that had been kept secret for decades, she begins to explore the causes of her emotional blockages. The search for the truth leads her into her own past and confronts her with family silence, repressed memories, and the question of how early experiences shape a person’s life.

A film that describes the love-hate relationship between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski, the deep trust between the director and the actor, and their independently and simultaneously hatched plans to murder one another.

New adventures from Lars, the cheeky little polar bear who loves nothing more than to explore the big wide world. This time Lars and his friend Robby start out for a rescue mission for their friend Caruso leading them all the way to the Galapagos Islands.

Petra von Kant is a successful fashion designer -- arrogant, caustic, and self-satisfied. She mistreats Marlene (her secretary, maid, and co-designer). Enter Karin, a 23-year-old beauty who wants to be a model. Petra falls in love with Karin and invites her to move in.

Bruno Stroszek is released from prison and warned to stop drinking. He has few skills and fewer expectations: with a glockenspiel and an accordion, he ekes out a living as a street musician. He befriends Eva, a prostitute down on her luck and they join his neighbor, Scheitz, an elderly eccentric, when he leaves Germany to live in Wisconsin.

Elvira Weishaupt, once a burly working-class butcher, has made an enormous sacrifice for love. She has undergone a sex change for a romantic interest who has abandoned her, and she now must struggle to reconcile her past life with her present identity.

Eleven-year-old Philipp, known as Lippel, travels from Passau in Bavaria to the Orient without a flying carpet: because his father, the posh chef Otto Mattenheim, is on a business trip, the new housekeeper Mrs. Jakob looks after Lippel. But she turns out to be a petty childish terror. And so Lippel escapes into an oriental dream world at night, in which his father, Mrs. Jakob and two classmates strangely appear. Lippel experiences the most amazing adventures in the Orient. His dreams help him and his classmates to chase the evil Mrs. Jakob out of the house and rescue his new friend, the street dog Muck.

When 17-year-old Effi Briest marries the elderly Baron von Instetten, she moves to a small, isolated Baltic town and a house that she fears is haunted. Starved for companionship, Effi begins a friendship with Major Crampas, a charismatic womanizer.

Frau Emma Küsters prepares dinner late one seemingly-ordinary afternoon in her seemingly-ordinary Frankfurt kitchen. She wants to add canned sausages to the stew; her irritating daughter-in-law thinks otherwise. But the point is moot: Ernst Küsters has not only murdered the personnel director at the soap factory where he's employed but succeeded that by committing suicide.

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.

Ulrike Ottinger is an exceptional filmmaker and artist. Her cinematic universe has influenced entire generations. As a young woman, she brought the international art world to the sleepy town of Konstanz. It all began on the shores of Lake Constance where Ulrike Ottinger was born and where she still often spends time. Filmmaker Brigitte Kramer chose to begin her film at Lake Constance since she too shares Ottinger’s birthplace and a great love of these waters. This is also where the filmmaker’s own artistic development began, not least as a result of her encounter with Ottinger and her work. Other fellow travellers and friends appearing in this film include art historian Katharina Sykora, collector and curator Ingvild Goetz, film historian Ulrich Gregor, philosopher Bernd Scherer and actor Irm Hermann. Using this common ground as a starting point for an exploration of Ottinger’s substantial oeuvre, this documentary provides a keen insight into the artist’s life and work.

Laura sees a shooting star falling to earth and finds it in a park, down on the floor and with a broken point. The star is a living being, and Laura takes her home to reattach its point with a band-aid. The little star has special powers and can make people fly, or bring inanimate objects to life. But the more she stays on Earth, the weaker she becomes and her colors fade away and her powers start to fail. Laura must find a way to send the little star back into outer space.

In 1942 Bavaria, Eva is alone, when Adolf arrives with Josef, his wife Magda, and Martin to spend a couple of days without politics.

Having fathered an illegitimate child with his lover, Marie, feckless soldier Franz Woyzeck takes odd jobs around his small town to provide some extra money for them. One job is volunteering for experiments conducted by a local doctor, who puts Woyzeck on a diet of peas. This serves to drive him close to madness, and the discovery that Marie is involved in an affair with the local drum major exacerbates the situation. Pushed too far, Woyzeck resorts to violence.

Loosely based on the notorious Richard Speck murders, this is the grim tale of a disturbed Vietnam vet returning home via Belfast, who invades a house shared by eight nurses and proceeds to terrorize and murder them.

Comic artist Brösel trades a magic pen that helps him come up with funny stories for the promise to fulfill one of Rumpelstiltskin's wishes. The resulting animated films show episodes of the life of Werner, a plumber apprentice and motorbike enthusiast and his friends. They are interspersed with the live-action portions.

In the beginning of the 19th century, Johannes Elias Alder is born in a small village in the Austrian mountains. While growing up he is considered strange by the other villagers and discovers his love of music, especially rebuilding and playing the organ at the village church. After experiencing an "acoustic wonder", his eye color changes and he can hear even the most subtle sounds.

While dealing with a burnt-down house, smelly diapers and brutal lack of sleep, a Lower Bavarian police officer faces his worst adversary: cholesterol.

Benjamin Levi (Bruno Cathomas) is a Bavarian cattle dealer traveling to pre-World War II Germany on his annual trip to a remote farming village. Levi hopes to do some business and, more importantly, win the hand of the lovely Lisbeth (Caroline Ebner). But Nazi propaganda has gripped the small community and poisoned it forever. Now, Levi and Lisbeth are targets of hate in this provocative and shocking drama.

Single mother Sabine lives with her 18-year-old son Ilya at Kochelsee in Bavaria. Ilya wants to take some time out and go on vacation to Italy with his girlfriend Cora. But Cora suddenly disappears and Ilya goes to Italy alone. When Sabine discovers a buried cave in the mountains shortly afterwards, she finds Cora's body. She fears that Cora was unfaithful to Ilya and that he killed his girlfriend in the heat of the moment. Sabine does everything she can to divert suspicion away from her son. In desperation, she turns to the village policeman Asam. Sabine has no idea that she has made a fool of herself with him. While the police search for Ilya, Sabine discovers the secret of the intelligent but brutal village policeman. Is Asam himself the murderer in the end? Sabine's life is in danger.

Explores the incredibly complex backstory of Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber. This exquisitely crafted inquiry into the rationale of this mythic figure situates him within a late 20th century web of technology—a system that he grew to oppose. A marvelously subversive approach to the history of the Internet, this insightful documentary combines speculative travelogue and investigative journalism to trace contrasting countercultural responses to the cybernetic revolution.

Bavaria's most laid-back cop returns, juggling parenting and working at the family farm with the reopening of a grisly cold case.

When 22-year-old Rainer Werner Fassbinder storms the stage of a small, progressive theatre in Munich 1967, and seizes the production without further ado, nobody suspects this brazen young rebel to become one of the most important post-war German filmmakers. Despite early setbacks, many of his films breakout at the most renowned films festivals and polarise audience, critics and filmmakers alike. His radical views and self-exploitation, as well as his longing for love, have made him one of the most fascinating film directors of this time.

In 1914, with men gone to war, Marcel Proust hired Céleste Albaret as his attendant. More than eight years later, she was at his side when he died. During this entire time, she only entered his room when he rang for her, sleeping from 9 AM to 3 PM to wait during the night while he wrote. Marcel uses her as more than a servant: she is his muse, telling stories of her childhood to stir his remembrance of things past; she's in cahoots with him as he manipulates those he wants to draw on for his writing; she listens appalled to his descriptions of the underside of Paris. Hers is a life of love and sweet devotion as he races time to finish his work before death.

Germany 1939. Hans and Lene marry the day before the war breaks out, and Hans is sent to the Eastern front. During a bombing raid their daughter Anna is born. The house is destroyed and Lene and Anna moves in with relatives in Berlin. Hans survives the war but he is not the same person as in 1939, and he and Lene find it difficult to live together again.

The Second World War is over and now begins in post-war Germany, the reconstruction. Jakob Formann sees his chance here and begins a rapid rise as an entrepreneur.

The true story of Otomo, a black man seeking work and asylum in the German city of Stuttgart. However, all he finds is racism, police trouble and his final destiny.

A drifting teen slips from petty crime into exploitation on the streets of Hamburg, courted by a self-serving journalist and a predatory pimp, before a doomed romance pushes him toward a desperate armed-robbery scheme he can’t outrun.

The gritty, kinetic, visionary cinema of Roland Klick is ripe for rediscovery. After shooting with international stars, such as Mario Adorf and Dennis Hopper, Klick celebrated international success and achieved cult status. Yet after making only six features, he disappeared from the scene in a rather mysterious way. The story of an uncompromising film maniac.

In Echigo, Japan, the snow often lies several feet deep well into May, covering landscapes and villages. Over the centuries, the inhabitants have organised their lives accordingly. In order to record their very distinctive forms of everyday life, their festivals, and religious rituals, Ulrike Ottinger journeyed to the mythical snow country – accompanied by two Kabuki performers. Taking the parts of the students Takeo and Mako, they follow in the footsteps of Bokushi Suzuki, who in the mid-19th century wrote his remarkable book “Snow Country Tales”.

A bearded director named EVA, a fictive Rainer Werner Fassbinder, lives in a large house with his cast and crew as he films Dumas' Lady of the Camellias. His accountant informs him he has many unpaid bills and little cash on hand. EVA throws a fit and fires him. He then proceeds to play one person off against another, dismiss with cruelty his recent lover Ali, sleep openly with his leading lady Gudrun, and make a direct and public play for his leading man, Walter. He's mercurial, dictatorial, and manic. Will he finish the film, having drawn great performances from his actors through his manipulations, or will his antics set events in motion that spin out of his control?

East-Berlin, 1961, shortly after the erection of the Wall. Konrad, Sophie and three of their friends plan a daring escape to Western Germany. The attempt is successful, except for Konrad, who remains behind. From then on, and for the next 28 years, Konrad and Sophie will attempt to meet again, in spite of the Iron Curtain. Konrad, who has become a reputed Astrophysicist, tries to take advantage of scientific congresses outside Eastern Germany to arrange encounters with Sophie. But in a country where the political police, the Stasi, monitors the moves of all suspicious people (such as Konrad's sister Barbara and her husband Harald), preserving one's privacy, ideals and self-respect becomes an exhausting fight, even as the Eastern block begins its long process of disintegration.

In 1930s New York, a group of bored wealthy women convene in social situations and converse about their husbands and/or lovers.

One Saturday, the Slurb, a strange little creature with a proboscis nose, enters Mr. Taschenbier's life. Slurb, who immediately adopts the shy Mr. Taschenbier as his "daddy," is, however, his sheer opposite: he is cheeky and chaotic and throws his well-ordered life into sheer chaos. But when Taschenbier discovers that he can fulfill all his wishes with the help of Slurb's blue freckles, his life suddenly changes. He appeases his bad-tempered landlady, Mrs. Rotkohl, and he can finally get one over on his nasty neighbor, Mr. Lürcher. Everything could be so nice if Mr. Taschenbier didn't fall in love with his pretty colleague Mrs. März and if the Slurb didn't almost burst with jealousy...

In Friedliche Tage, we enter a totalitarian and inhuman society, in which daily life is a series of nightmares and the protagonists search for a utopia of freedom and love.

In 1974, the woman kills herself. I meet the man again in 1997. He still lives in the apartment he moved into 41 years ago with his wife and child. The apartment is almost unchanged. The man is my father. After that and over the following two and a half years, I make recordings with a DV camera. I observe the father, even following him on a boat trip through the Caribbean. The camera allows distance, but also closeness.

Alma Mahler's affair with the young architect Walter Gropius sets in motion a marital drama that forces her husband Gustav Mahler to seek advice from Sigmund Freud.

Story of the successful author Dr. Jekyll. One day, Hyde, one of his invented characters, detaches himself from the story and enters Jekyll's life. With the help of the fairy Jeanny, Hyde takes away Jekyll's penis, and later also his hair and teeth, and increasingly pushes him out of his successful life.

Chris Marker’s portrait of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky documents the director at work on his final film, The Sacrifice, during the last year of his life. Interweaving behind-the-scenes footage with excerpts from Tarkovsky’s earlier works, Marker crafts a moving reflection on the artist’s vision, methods, and enduring legacy.

Unemployed Franz and his son Benny swindle the shady loan shark Johannsen out of a whopping 25,000 marks. But the sudden windfall makes not only his wife and mother Hilda suspicious, but also their neighbor Konrad – who happens to be a police commissioner.

Mo lost her heart to Tom, but left him nine years ago for no apparent reason. Now she lives together with son Benjamin in Hamburg. Mo has another man, Tom has been living with another woman for some time. When Mo learns that she is terminally ill, she returns to her great love, Tom. Both feel instinctively that they still love each other. But Mo reveals nothing of her illness and their child.

The young sales presenter Nina Just is not respected in the slightest by her mother Rose, who lives in a farmhouse with her partner Werner. The young woman's life comes apart at the seams when her mother falls ill and needs a donor kidney to survive. She finally agrees to a transplant.

The lives of a Serb family are torn apart by the pressures of the not-too-distant war with the Croats. The film addresses the fundamental question "Can love survive between political enemies?"

A black comedy about the dream of freedom and the difficulty of obtaining this: While Molly (Eva Mattes), Elisabeth (Katja Flint) and Maria (Ornella Muti) are great friends, but at the same time completely different. Molly is a difficult stressed housewife and mother of three children, Elisabeth is the perfect career woman and Maria uses already in their third marriage sex appeal to get ahead in life. But one day it turns out that the three except their friendship still connects another great thing in common: They are all tired of her life as a wife. And so begins the story of a rabenscharzen comedy about the dream of freedom and the difficulties to achieve this. The only question is: How are they merely their husbands going on?

By the time director Katja Raganelli arrived in California to make a film about Dorothy Arzner in 1980, Arzner had passed away in a car accident. Nonetheless, Raganelli visited Arzner’s desert home and retraced the pioneering filmmaker’s career in this documentary, using Arzner’s trove of photographs, as well as interviews with her leading lady Esther Ralston, to create this nuanced portrait of a woman who bucked every norm and defied societal expectation.

Although members of the Hitler Youth chant anti-Semitic paroles in front of his house during the Purim festival, Rabbi Singer is still profoundly convinced that Germany will stay a safe country for him, his family, and his fellow believers. But several years later, his son David is banned from going to school because he is a Jew. Shortly after, Rabbi Singer and his wife are deported. Now, young David also fears for his life. In constant fear of being detected, he tries to find a way to leave Germany.

Lithuania, 1941, during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of texts on Jewish culture, stolen by the Germans, are gathered in Vilnius to be classified, either to be stored or to be destroyed. A group of Jewish scholars and writers, commissioned by the invaders to carry out the sorting operations, but reluctant to collaborate and determined to save their legacy, hide many books in the ghetto where they are confined. This is the epic story of the Paper Brigade.

Interview film with German director Werner Herzog revisiting the films he made up to ca. 1977.

A one-hour biographical documentary about Alice Guy-Blaché, one of the first women to direct films.

Andy lives with his parents on a small farm in Lower Bavaria. He rides his "Schluchtenflitzer", a moped, to discos with his friends. He meets Roswitha in a dance hall.

The documentary tells the story of the Berlin luxury hotel, which was built by the director's great-grandfather and fell victim to a fire shortly after the end of the Second World War.

A five-man US fireteam dig in at the Bon Song Valley (represented by the Bavarian forest) to await the end of the Easter truce with the Vietnamese. A Vietnamese girl passes by and the team rape and kill her. One refuses to take part and escapes to report the incident, but it is dismissed by his superior.

Over 40 years ago, Josefa left her home village in a dispute. A lot has happened in the meantime. Now she returns as a mature woman to where she is still known as a man.

The Taschenbiers could actually lead quite a contented life - if it weren't for the strange fact that if you have a Sams in your home for 10 years, you slowly but steadily become a Sams yourself. And this is exactly what happens to Mr. Taschenbier. You can't see his recurring transformations from the outside. But his behavior changes all the more: he's just as greedy, chirpy and cheeky as our Sams. But when he changes back again, he can't remember anything. And what only we know: If Sams stays with the Taschenbiers, then this transformation will continue until Mr. Taschenbier himself has completely turned into a Sams!

Frido Schulz and Rosa Schätzlein have known each other since their student days. But while Rosa made a career as a lawyer, Frido had to take over his father's electrical store. Since then, he and Rosa have been like cats and dogs, even though they are neighbors and Frido's wife Hanne is Rosa's best friend. But then Hanne dies. Her sudden death only exacerbates their relationship as neighbors. Frido's accusations against Rosa reach their climax when he drags her to court for theft: She is accused of stealing his little black cat, which had run into him one evening.

Dr. med. Job Prätorius enjoys great popularity among patients, doctors and students alike thanks to his kindness and philanthropy. Only his colleague Prof. Speiter begrudges him his success. When his patient Maria Violetta wants to commit suicide because of an extramarital pregnancy, Prätorius takes care of the young woman. When he tries to gently prepare her father for the news, the latter considers Praetorius to be a more than welcome admirer of his daughter. As a deep affection develops between the doctor and his patient, the two eventually marry. Their private happiness fuels Prof. Speiter's envy. With the help of Praetorius' mysterious factotum Shunderson, he finally believes that he can uncover some dark secrets from the doctor's past. But Praetorius manages to refute all the accusations in a court of honor with wit and astonishing revelations.

Sams in danger, it is said, when Mr. Taschenbier's son Martin brings the Sams back into the household, which, however, is kidnapped shortly afterwards by the sports teacher because of his special skills.

With the death of her mother, eight-year-old Anna ends her childhood: From now on, she has to look after the nine-member family. Deprivation-rich years, which also find no end when Anna marries: Her husband Albert must be a soldier in the Second World War, and the pregnant Anna has to work hard in the farm and care sick relatives. Lonely and exposed to the harassment of the tyrannical mother-in-law, she waits for Albert, with no certainty that he will ever return.

Within four episodes ("Er am Ende", "Muss ich aufpassen", "Eva" and "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" ) are being told adventures of love sick Felix. On Sylt he meets two nymphomaniac women, in Hamburg he meets Eva, a girl who is even more love sick and later he meets Luci who gives him an indecent proposal. Thus he flees again...

Rosa von Praunheim is an icon in the scene: gay activist, loving provocateur and a very special filmmaker from Berlin for decades. His curiosity for people and their fates runs through his extensive film work. For his 70th birthday he has now made 70 new short films. In the first part of the big project, he confronts Thilo Sarrazin with the mayor of Neukölln, Heinz Buschkowsky, and the Turkish lawyer and women's rights activist Seyran Ates; shows a homosexual hustler in Bucharest; gossip reporter Andreas Kurtz, who knows everything about Berlin's celebrities; Rosa's neighbors who live with her dependent brother; Esther Bauer, who survived Auschwitz, and the Berlin comedian Ades Zabel. High on the roofs of Berlin, the gay chimney sweep Alain Rappsilber tells him about his fetish leather meeting Folsom.

After two decades in prison Widmer, a former German RAF-terrorist, is released. He meets Valerie, his next door neighbour. The young woman tries to get her life back on track after she lost child custody for her little son. She shows some interest in Widmer, the two of them seem to have something in common. They discreetly enter into the secrets of their lives. Till the truth comes between them.

An essay film in which filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim interviews "the willing victims of Rainer Werner Fassbinder."

In a small German town, a 14-year-old girl's relationship with an older man draws scrutiny and leads to legal consequences, reflecting the constraints of their social surroundings.

The Gangster Macheath secretly marries the daughter of beggar king Peachum. When Peachum finds out, he instructs the police chief Brown to arrest and hang Macheath. If not, all the beggars of Soho will disturb the upcoming coronation.

Germany in the Thirties. A movie teller realizes that his profession is not longer needed. Silent movies are not produced any longer. Telling stories is the only thing the man was ever good in, so he does not know what to do now. As political circumstances are changing dramatically these days in Germany, he gets new hope that things will again be going better for him...

About the sexual relations of minors, told in eight episodes, dealing with parenthood, hitch-hiking, and the youth is not so bad after all.

An initiative discusses a videotape in which a group of activists portrays themselves and their work against the "nuclear power mafia." After argumentatively and polemically confronting the economic and political power of the energy industry, the activists call for the shutdown of escalators to counteract people's electro-paralysis.

A look behind the heroic story of a Guatamalan immigrant who became the first US soldier to die in the American-led war in Iraq.

Inspired by the real-life events of Mathias Kneißl, a marginal man, son of poor farmers from Bavaria, in the late XIX century. Mathias stole from the rich to give to the poor, becoming a hero for the rural people and a popular social rebel. He was chased by the police until his unfortunate sentence.

Humor helps people through hard times. A look at the viral videos, songs and sketches that have filled the Internet worldwide since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and what this lockdown humor says about humans in distress.

Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) is both a cultural icon and a lasting source of artistic inspiration. His famous female figures, like Venus and Primavera, have become part of our shared visual memory and influence artists worldwide. Berlin director and art historian Grit Lederer explores Botticelli’s life and work, focusing on the Gemäldegalerie’s impressive collection. The film examines how his iconic paintings continue to inspire art and advertising today. Experts reveal what makes his style unique and why his work was forgotten for centuries after his death. Contemporary artists such as French artist Orlan and American Michael Joaquin Grey present works inspired by Botticelli. The documentary traces Botticelli’s enduring impact from Florence through Paris and New York to Berlin.

It is 1944 and Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels narrowly escapes an assassination attempt on the way to Obersalzberg. It is whispered to him that his rival Heinrich Himmler is the mastermind and that he has also hidden a double of the propaganda minister. Goebbels sets off immediately. He meets his double, Harry Geduldig, in a mysterious fortress. There is a mix-up. The real Goebbels remains a prisoner in the fortress, while the fake one deceives the guards and escorts and frees his great love Grete Zipfel. At a party meeting in Nuremberg, the people cheer him on. But then the journey takes him into the lion's den: on the Obersalzberg he meets Hitler and finally "his" wife Magda. Harry risks everything to save Grete.

In Uganda, AIDS-infected mothers have begun writing what they call Memory Books for their children. Aware of the illness, it is a way for the family to come to terms with the inevitable death that it faces. Hopelessness and desperation are confronted through the collaborative effort of remembering and recording, a process that inspires unexpected strength and even solace in the face of death.

Petra Hoffmann is in her early 50s and pregnant. She is not carrying her own child though, but that of her daughter. Midwife Lena Lorenz has been looking after mother and daughter for a while and the pregnancy has been unproblematic thus far, but shortly before the birth the family starts to break apart.

It’s the early 1950s and little Franzi is growing up in the small Austrian town of Judenburg. Her oppressive family home is dominated by her feverish and mentally ill father, who is rigid and unpredictable. Her father, who regularly delivers halves of pork for the butcher, spent several years in the French Foreign Legion in Morocco, Algeria and Syria – a period which he partly glorifies but which still also haunts him. Franzi immerses herself in this world by looking at an abundance of beguiling yet disturbing photographs taken at the time by her father. Her own childish fantasy realm of fairy tales and picture books soon intermingle with nightmares as reality merges with imagination, war, horror and beauty.

Documentary about artist Ai Weiwei's 2014 exhibition in Berlin.

Katja emigrated from East Berlin to Bavaria. There she has found the love of her life. Now she invites her mother Rita to take a look at her future husband. During her journey from Berlin to Bavaria, Rita picks up the stranded actor Hotte.

Wünsdorf in Brandenburg was a military base for decades: first for the Prussians, then for the Wehrmacht and finally for the Red Army. At the center of Elfi Mikesch's multifaceted essay is the pioneer of ecological urban development Ekhart Hahn, who, together with artists, is committed to a new, sustainable use of the site - above all in the interests of peace. Is a catharsis possible after the catastrophe?