Hitlers Hollywood

Film journalist and critic Rüdiger Suchsland examines German cinema from 1933, when the Nazis came into power, until 1945, when the Third Reich collapsed. (A sequel to From Caligari to Hitler, 2015.)

Une collection d'art et de sang : le catalogue Goering

For more than a decade, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler's right-hand man during the infamous Third Reich, assembled a collection of thousands of works of art that were meticulously catalogued.

Karajan – Porträt eines Maestros

An account of the life and work of controversial German orchestra conductor Herbert von Karajan (1908-89), celebrated as one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century.

Merkel – Macht der Freiheit

Driven by extensive archive material and interviews with those who know her, this is the astonishing story of how a triple outsider – a woman, a scientist, and an East German – became the de facto leader of the “Free World”, told for the first time for an international audience.

Die Dichter und die Räterepublik

Documentary film with play scenes about the rise and fall of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919 from the perspective of various well-known poets and writers who experienced the events as contemporary witnesses.

Hitler's Putsch: The Birth of the Nazi Party

The night of November 8, 1923, is arguably the most significant and transformative in the history of the twentieth century. A localised uprising in the Bavarian capital of Munich, led by a small man with a toothbrush moustache and a poisonous yet compelling grandiloquence, would have repercussions that would lead to the political shackling of an entire nation, the most abhorrent crimes of the century and a world war. You might say, Adolf Hitler came of age amid the smell of sweat and sawdust of a Munich beer hall. In the political chaos of 1923, he was a local irritant, gaining popularity among workers and soldiers, the ethos of his Nazi Party spreading like a virus. His first attempt at attaining true power came with an attempted putsch on the already separatist government of Bavaria, which left him imprisoned.

Die Mutigen 56 - Deutschlands längster Streik

Emma Freese is desperate when her husband Alfred falls ill at the Howaldtswerke in Kiel. How is the family supposed to get by without their wages? The war has scarred this generation, but now things are supposed to be looking up. The workers want their fair share and are fighting for an income that also gives them room to live. In October 1956, 34,000 metalworkers in the shipyards and factories of Schleswig-Holstein walk off the job to fight for justice and their dignity. This strike is still regarded as the toughest and longest in Germany. Employers and politicians stand in the strikers' way.

Die Sekretäre

The film talks about the rise and fall of the two most influential protagonists in GDR-politics. In succession, over long stretches even together, Ulbricht and Honecker determined the course of the GDR, of course without ever getting out of being a satellite state to the big brother in Moscow. The film looks for the caesura and crucial points in the power game between Ulbricht and Honecker.

Die Wannseekonferenz - Die Dokumentation

It was arguably the deadliest conference in human history. The topic: plans to murder 11 million Jews in Europe. The participants were not psychopaths, but educated men from the SS, police, administration and ministries. The invitation to the meeting at Wannsee came from Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office. The Wehrmacht's campaigns of conquest in Eastern Europe marked the beginning of the systematic murder of Jews in Poland and the Soviet Union. In mid-September 1941, Hitler made the decision to deport all Jews from Germany to the East. Although there had been transports before, Hitler's order represented a further escalation in the murderous decision-making process. Persecution and discrimination had been part of everyday life since 1933. But as a result, the living conditions for the Jews in the Third Reich became even more difficult, among them the Berlin Jew Margot Friedländer, born in 1921, and the Chotzen family.

Stammheim - Zeit des Terrors

The Stammheim trial against the leadership of the first generation of the RAF was one of the most elaborate in the Federal Republic of Germany. Through this trial, Stammheim also became a place of identity for the RAF. The docudrama uses the perspective of Horst Bubeck, who as a prison officer in the cell wing had the most intensive contact with the prisoners, to shed new light on the history.

Ganz normale Männer - Der „vergessene Holocaust“

Six million Jews died during World War II, both in the extermination camps and murdered by the mobile commandos of the Einsatzgruppen and police battalions, whose members shot men, women and children, day after day, obediently, as if it were a normal job, a fact that is hardly known today. Who were these men and how could they commit such crimes?

Landauer: Gefeiert, verbannt, vergessen

Documentary about Kurt Landauer, the long-time Jewish president of FC Bayern München, who led the club to its first German championship, was persecuted and forced out of office by the Nazis, and rebuilt the club after the war.

Les Tribunaux d'Hitler

The destruction of the traditional legal system is probably one of the lesser-known yet essential goals of the Nazi state. The aim was to establish the supremacy of the "people's community" over the individual by subjugating the judicial system. The documentary looks at the careers of four people who were actively involved or became victims.

Das Boot – Welterfolg aus der Tiefe

In 1981, a film about the misadventures of a German U-boat crew in 1941 becomes a worldwide hit almost four decades after the end of the World War II. Millions of viewers worldwide make Das Boot the most internationally successful German film of all time. But due to disputes over the script, accidents on the set, and voices accusing the makers of glorifying the war, the project was many times on the verge of being cancelled.

Inventur - Metzstraße 11

Tenants of one old building in the centre of Münich are featured in this film: most of them are foreigners who work in Germany as "guest workers" (Yugoslavs, Italians, Turks, Greeks etc.). In their mother tongue, each of them tells who he or she is, and briefly talks about their major worries, new hopes and plans for the future.

Avenging Evil

In 1946, just after the end of World War II, a secret organization of Holocaust survivors plans a terrible revenge: since the Nazis have killed millions of Jews, they will kill millions of Germans.

Wie konnte es geschehen? - Teil 1: "Deutschland erwache..." (1914 - 1938)

In 1945, 160 German cities lay in ruins and the loss of millions of lives, billions in material assets and countless cultural treasures was mourned throughout Europe... With the question “How could it happen?”, the film goes back to the year 1914, when the “primal catastrophe of the 20th century” took its course with the First World War.

Verbotene Liebe - Queere Opfer der NS-Diktatur

Sexual minorities were oppressed, imprisoned and murdered by the Nazis. Paragraph 175 criminalized homosexual men during the Nazi era – but the Nazis also discriminated against lesbians and trans people. They should be excluded from the national community. More than 50,000 queer people have been proven to have been persecuted. The documentary highlights three poignant fates in the context of Nazi terror.

DDR - die entsorgte Republik

Caligari — Wie der Horror ins Kino kam

On February 26, 1920, Robert Wiene's world-famous film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari premiered at the Marmorhaus in Berlin. To this day, it is considered a manifesto of German expressionism; a legend of cinema and a key work to understand the nature of the Weimar Republic and the constant political turmoil in which a divided society lived after the end of the First World War.