Just a Gigolo

Just a Gigolo 1978

4.80

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.

1978

Decalogue X

Decalogue X 1989

7.92

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.

1989

Marianne and Juliane

Marianne and Juliane 1981

7.09

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.

1981

A Demon in My View

A Demon in My View 1991

3.00

A strangler known as the Kenbourne Killer has been murdering streetwalkers for 25 years. The police set out to track him down.

1991

Decalogue I

Decalogue I 1989

8.07

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.

1989

Decalogue V

Decalogue V 1989

7.90

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.

1989

Decalogue IV

Decalogue IV 1989

7.77

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.

1989

Tramp or the Only and Incomparable Lenny Jacobsen

Tramp or the Only and Incomparable Lenny Jacobsen 1968

1

The drifter has a name - Lenny Jacobsen" - An outsider is chased to his death. The case remains uncertain, while what otherwise interests at best incidentally, the sensitivities of the victims and the perpetrators, to seemingly trivial expressions, gestures, sentences becomes the main thing.

1968

Linie 1

Linie 1 1988

7.20

Film version of the musical by the same name: Sunnie, a girl from the province, comes to Berlin to meet rock star Johnnie who had given her his address after a concert. On the subway to Kreuzberg, Sunnie becomes acquainted with a couple of strange people, among them "asphalt cowboy" Bambi. Bambi tells Sunnie that Johnnie’s address in Kreuzberg does not exist. Together, Sunnie and Bambi try to find the rock star in bustling metropolitan Berlin.

1988

My Sister’s Good Fortune

My Sister’s Good Fortune 1995

5.44

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.

1995

Lights from Afar

Lights from Afar 1998

1

Berlin, the German capital again, a few years after the fall of the Wall. The city in upheaval is also changing the lives of its inhabitants. A young photographer experiences these changes as a rupture, he looks into an unclear, unsettling future and increasingly feels like a stranger in his old city. He and his friends from the generation of the children of the Wall try to find a new identity without losing the old one. Young artists who fail the profitability test of the market economy. In his search, Robert Paris ends up far away, in India. Back in Berlin, he started developing photos again - the first in years...

1998

Jail Bait

Jail Bait 1973

6.20

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.

1973

A.D.A.M.

A.D.A.M. 1988

4.00

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…

1988

My Mother's Courage

My Mother's Courage 1995

5.60

The deportation of 4000 Jews from Budapest to Auschwitz in July 1944, as told by George Tabori, and how the narrator’s mother escaped it, owing to coincidence, courage and some help from where you’d least expect it.

1995

Wir Kellerkinder

Wir Kellerkinder 1960

5.90

During the Third Reich, Macke played the drums for the Hitler Youth, but also had a "dangerous" penchant for jazz. After the war, he came under ideological fire in the Soviet zone. Finally in West Germany, he ends up in an institution.

1960

Dear Mr. Wonderful

Dear Mr. Wonderful 1982

4.80

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.

1982

Winterspelt 1944

Winterspelt 1944 1978

1

In the Second World War, spring 1944: shortly before the planned Ardennes offensive, Germans and Americans stand waiting on the German-Belgian border. The small Eifel village of Winterspelt threatens to become the scene of a bloody battle. A German officer comes up with a plan to hand over his battalion to the Americans without a fight. He finds support from three inhabitants of the small village, who help him to present his offer of surrender to the Americans, which they ultimately reject.

1978

Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press

Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press 1984

4.90

The final installment in Ulrike Ottinger’s Berlin Trilogy (following TICKET OF NO RETURN and FREAK ORLANDO) casts Delphine Seyrig as the nefarious Fritz Lang supervillain Dr. Mabuse, here the head of a powerful media empire that seeks to create headlines by manufacturing (and then publicly destroying) its own celebrity: the wealthy, handsome playboy Dorian Gray.

1984

Decalogue VIII

Decalogue VIII 1989

7.30

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.

1989

The Foundling

The Foundling 1967

1

The story centers on the Roman merchant Piacchi, who raises the foundling Nicolo after the death of his son and bequeaths all his possessions to the young man. However, the adopted son turns against Piacchi and his wife.

1967