After World War I, a war hero returns to Berlin to find that there's no place for him--he has no skills other than what he learned in the army, and can only find menial, low-paying jobs. He decides to become a gigolo to lonely rich women.
Germany, 1968: The priest's daughters Marianna and Juliane both fight for changes in society, like making abortion legal. However their means are totally different: while Juliane's committed as a reporter, her sister joins a terroristic organization. After she's caught by the police and put into isolation jail, Juliane remains as her last connection to the rest of the world. Although she doesn't accept her sister's arguments and her boyfriend Wolfgang doesn't want her to, Juliane keeps on helping her sister. She begins to question the way her sister is treated.
Ruby Dennis is an middle-aged man with an unfulfilled ambition as a singer. As he begins to pursue that ambition, his family falls apart.
Jerzy and Artur’s father dies, leaving behind a valuable stamp collection, which, they discover, is coveted by dealers of varying degrees of shadiness. The more involved the brothers get in their father’s world, the more dire and comical their situation becomes.
A young photographer has fallen in love with his girlfriend's sister. Nobody knows quite what to do. A stylish variation on the problems of triolism made with striking stability of style and a great feeling for mise-en-scène.
A father and daughter, Michał and Anka, have a unique intimacy, which the college-aged Anka is beginning to feel conflicted about. When she finds an unopened letter from her deceased mother, it seems to justify her attraction to Michał, who may not in fact be her father.
Zofia, a professor of ethics, is visited by Elżbieta, an American researching the fate of Jews who survived World War II. A daytime classroom conversation turns into a night of confrontation, and Zofia is forced to answer for a decision she made decades ago that directly affected the course of Elżbieta’s life.
Anthropologist Tobias Schmidt-Eberbach is about to get married. However, a find of a prehistoric skull on his wedding day messes up his plans. So does hitchhiker Uschi Mueller who he picks up merely by accident. It does not help that the police thinks that Tobias is a serial killer and Uschi his next victim, and neither that the real killer is still on the loose…
Jacek, an angry drifter, murders a taxi driver, brutally and without motive. His case is assigned to Piotr, an idealistic young lawyer who is morally opposed to the death penalty, and their interactions take on an emotional honesty that throws into stark relief for Piotr the injustice of killing of any kind.
In the not too distant future, in the year 1999: In Germany, payment may only be made by credit card, which leads to many people purchasing things they cannot pay for. A nasty debt collector from the almighty central bank sends out employees to take back unpaid goods from customers by force. A girl who calls herself Egon is also forced to work for this evil person. In the process, she meets nice Mike, with whom she falls in love. Soon Mike and his friend, the aging playboy Löffler, are in a turbulent adventure to free Egon from the clutches of the bank villain.
As a high school student, Majka bore a child, Ania, whom Majka’s mother, Ewa, has been raising as her own. Now that Majka is ready for motherhood, Ewa refuses to let go, leading Majka to kidnap her own daughter, with unexpected emotional consequences.
By comparing the St. Nicholas celebrations in Islamic and Protestant communities in Berlin, the relationship between the religions is explored.
Krzysztof, a semantics professor and computer hobbyist, is raising his young son, Paweł, to look to science for answers, while Irena, Paweł’s aunt, lives a life rooted in faith. Over the course of one day, both adults are forced to question their belief systems.
A strangler known as the Kenbourne Killer has been murdering streetwalkers for 25 years. The police set out to track him down.
Based on Franz Xaver Kroetz's play, which is in turn based on a true story, this film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder tells the story of a very young girl who, after persuading a local boy to become her lover, induces the anger of her father, whose incestuous sexual attentions to her have grown unbearable.
Dorota Geller, a married woman, faces a dilemma involving her sick husband's prognosis. Her husband's doctor, who believes in God, sweared about it in vain.
In this film, outspokenly homosexual filmmaker Rosa von Praunheim has documented his encounters with friends in the New York "underground" arts movement, the better-known of whom are William Burroughs (who says nothing for the camera), Andy Warhol (seen in the distance) and Fernando Arrabal (who is interviewed in Spanish). The emigrants named in the title are notable Germans who left the country before World War II, such as Greta Keller and Grete Mosheim. Reviewers at the time of the film's release considered it to have been a sort of paid vacation for the filmmaker rather than a serious effort. (Clarke Fountain, Rovi)
