In 1983 East Berlin, dedicated Stasi officer Gerd Wiesler begins spying on a famous playwright and his actress-lover Christa-Maria. Wiesler becomes unexpectedly sympathetic to the couple, and faces conflicting loyalties when his superior takes a liking to Christa-Maria.
Two families attempt a daredevil plan to escape the GDR with a homemade hot air balloon, but it crashes just before the border. The Stasi finds traces of this attempt to escape and immediately starts investigations, while the two families are forced to build a new escape balloon. With each passing day the Stasi is closer on their heels – a nerve-wracking race against time begins.
During the Cold War, an American scientist appears to defect to East Germany as part of a cloak and dagger mission to find the formula for a resin solution, but the plan goes awry when his fiancee, unaware of his motivation, follows him across the border.
Colonel Stok, a Soviet intelligence officer responsible for security at the Berlin Wall, appears to want to defect but the evidence is contradictory. Stok wants the British to handle his defection and asks for one of their agents, Harry Palmer, to smuggle him out of East Germany.
Stalinstadt, East Germany, 1956. While the Hungarian uprising against Soviets is taking place, teenage members of a classroom of the local school perform a seemingly harmless act that causes unexpected consequences.
When East German Eric Brogar wins a gold medal in the pentathlon, he escapes to freedom in the west with the help of a beautiful American athlete. But his demanding coach, Heinrich Mueller vows revenge and Eric's best friend and his father pay the ultimate price for his freedom when they are killed by the Secret Police. In Los Angeles, Eric starts to train for the gold again. But when Mueller comes to America, Eric must win the most deadly game of all… the fight for his life.
In 1980s East Germany, Barbara is a Berlin doctor banished to a country medical clinic for applying for an exit visa. Deeply unhappy with her reassignment and fearful of her co-workers as possible Stasi informants, Barbara stays aloof, especially from the good natured clinic head, Andre.
When a Polish sailor jumps ship in Britain, a couple of local intelligence operatives keep him under surveillance. Soon, he’s recruited to infiltrate a missile installation outside of East Berlin and bring back photos of the new rockets.
Two men want to escape from East Germany (under Communist rule) but they will only go if they can take their families with them. Based on a true story.
An East German community finds millions in soon-to-be-worthless marks during 1990s reunification, and take what they can carry.
A beautiful East German Olympic hopeful pole-vaults over the Berlin Wall to freedom.
Felix from West-Berlin falls in love with Thomas in East-Berlin. At first they keep their relationship going by regular visits from Felix, but the curfew forces him to return every evening. When the East-German authorities become suspicious, Thomas decides to try and flee to the West.
Former East Germany, 1992. Patrick Stein and Markus Bach, two very different police officers, are commissioned to investigate the disappearance of two female teenagers in a remote area of the country. Did they run away from home or did something more terrible happen to them?
Based on a true story of inmates at KZ Buchenwald that risked their lives to hide a small Jewish boy shortly before the liberation of the camp.
Paul and Paula have had bad experiences with love: Paul is financially well off but has lost all affection for his wife, and Paula leads a troublesome life raising two children on her own. They meet and discover a strong passion for each other. Life seems like a dream when they're together - but their short flights from the burdens of reality are once and again interrupted by Paul's ties to family and career.
To see snow and learn German, the young Vietnamese girl Trúc Lâm (Nano Nguyen) moves to a small town in the middle of the Erzgebirge mountains in Saxony. She is fascinated by the forest, the mountains and the clear air that smells of clouds and winter and burns her nose when she breathes it in - for which she is mocked by her classmates. On a trip to a mine, she gets lost in the labyrinth of dark shafts and suddenly emerges on the other side of the mountain. This world is almost identical to the old one - but the characters have been replaced. In the town on the other side, she meets Duc (Tri An Bui), the son of a Vietnamese family who run an Asian snack bar. And while Duc tries to find a balance between his German-Vietnamese heritage and the expectations of others, Trúc Lâm accepts the help of a ghost to find her way back into her world.
Post-war Germany 1945: Two rival gangs of uprooted boys fight each other in the ruins of Berlin, whose business is the black market out of necessity in order to survive. Their respective leaders are Gerhard and Dietrich. A pretty young circus artist named Corona comes to the destroyed city with a traveling circus. She immediately caught the boys' attention. When the latter notice that the circus director is abusing the girl, the two gangs join forces and plot an act of revenge against the tyrant. But with the hustle and bustle caused by this, Corona falls from the trapeze and is seriously injured. When the circus moves on, the boys organize a doctor for the sick artist who has been left behind. Their collectively concern for the blonde beauty makes them forget their enmity. This welds the troops closer together and sets the course for a common, meaningful future.
Andreas Dresen's adaptation of Clemens Meyer's novel about a group of East German friends right after the fall of the Wall.
Persona Non Grata in his homeland, protest singer Klaus Drittemann must leave East Berlin, his wife and child and emigrate to West Berlin, where the representatives of an American record company are eagerly waiting for him. They plan to exploit his defection from communism both ideologically and financially. But Klaus, as ill-at-ease in the West as he was in the East, is reluctant to be used as an expendable commodity. Leaving his contract unsigned (or signed in his manner), he leaves for Cambridge to meet his father, a concert player, who -just like him - left East Berlin thirty years ago as Klaus was a little boy. He is accompanied by a young French journalist, Emma, who knows where his father has been living since he disappeared for more than a decade. The young lady is cooperative but might hide things from him...