This smash hit, which captures the East German 70's style in its gritty-glitzy visuals and its catchy soundtrack, is ranked by film critics among the 100 most significant German films of all time. Sunny (Renate Krössner, Go for Zucker), an aspiring singer, longs for fulfillment and to be recognized as someone special. She gets kicked out of her band, but starts over in the "underground" scene of East Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg. Based on a true story,...

Although he has a girlfriend who is expecting his child, Philipp, a young teacher in Berlin, meets Matthias and falls in love. After years of repressing his homosexuality, he must finally accept himself for who he truly is. The first and only DEFA feature film about homosexuality, Coming Out premiered on November 9, 1989 ... the evening the Berlin Wall came down. Philipp and Tanja teach at the same school. Both enjoy their work immensely, win their...

Foreman Balla is the self-proclaimed king of a massive construction site. His co-workers stick close to him, like musketeers, as long as he makes sure they are paid. But things stop running smoothly when materials get scarce and two newcomers arrive on the site: Kati, a young engineer, and Werner Horrath, the new Party Secretary. Balla's swaggering, reminiscent of Hollywood gunslingers, melts away as he realizes he is in love with Kati. Arguably the...

Stationed in a secluded Bulgarian village in 1943, Walter, an artist and sergeant in the Wehrmacht, lives an almost idyllic life far away from the war. Then one day a transit camp is set up for Jews arriving from Greece. Ruth, one of the Greek Jews, asks Walter to help a pregnant woman in the camp. At first he refuses, but then changes his mind and sends a doctor into the camp ... Stars, based on scriptwriter Angel Wagenstein's personal experiences...

In a loose set of cabaret pieces, Steffen Mensching and Hans-Eckardt Wenzel, highly acclaimed East German poets, songwriters and clowns satirize East German life in its final days and the arrival of new times after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Da-Da-R is a wordplay on the irreverent Dada art movement of the 1920s and the German acronym for East Germany -- the DDR. The clowns are allowed to leave prison to sing for people outside. As they perform their...

The eternal triangle: a rich guy; his bored, beautiful, blond wife; and a rugged stranger, down on his luck and ready for action. What more do you need? In this case, to know that the rich guy is a Turk who is still, despite having spent virtually his entire life in Germany, a permanent outsider. That the hot blond wife has a colorful past and owes large debts (which hubby now holds over her head). That the rugged stranger is a former soldier who...

It's 1983. The Cold War is hot. The threat of nuclear conflict looms. Born and raised in East Germany, Martin Rauch is sent undercover, as Moritz Stamm, to West Germany, to work for a top General in the Bundeswehr. Officially, his job is to gather intelligence on the placement of the Pershing II Missiles. A secondary gig develops, infiltrating youth culture through close relationships with the General's two children. But nothing and no one are as...