Shortly after German reunification, three residents of a quiet area north of Berlin talk about their plans and attempts at new economic beginnings amid the changes brought by the fall of the Berlin Wall.

On a weekend trip to the countryside, Laura miraculously survives a car crash. Physically unhurt but deeply shaken, she is taken in by a local woman who witnessed the accident and now cares for Laura with motherly devotion. When her husband and adult son also give up their initial resistance to Laura's presence, the four of them slowly build up some family-like routine. But soon they can no longer ignore their past...

Self-important author Leon joins his best friend on a summer holiday near the Baltic Sea to complete his novel. When they arrive, they find their house is already occupied by a carefree woman who challenges Leon to open up. Meanwhile, forest wildfires rage around them and impending disaster looms.

A lonesome car. The wind is whistling. A door of an undefined building opens—is it a holiday bungalow, a shed or a ruin? A woman is standing at the window. The heat of an idle day of holiday, perhaps. The South, a place of longing.

警长汉斯·冯·茅尔夫斯被叫到了慕尼黑周边的一处奇怪的案发现场：林间空地上两个草草掩盖的墓穴。受害者是当地一家家具作坊的女老板以及她的哈巴狗。死者的前夫——彼得·布劳尔，在第一时间受到了重点调查。自从他离开了公司之后，这个一度繁荣的中产企业便走上了下坡路，而他自己也逐渐潦倒。在职工们眼里，死者并不是特别受欢迎，而她还想把公司变卖给海外的投资者。 这一次与茅尔夫斯合作的经验丰富的同事康斯坦斯·海尔曼，她在个人生活中受过重创，休整之后正试图重回职场。然而案情却进展缓慢：所有可能的嫌疑人都有完美的不在场证明，薄弱的推理在仔细查验后又无法被证实，证据链也显得不够充分。两位警探陷入了怪圈。

2008 film by Christian Petzold

Clara and Hans are left-wing terrorists who have been sought by police for almost fifteen years. Their increasingly rebellious daughter Jeanne begins to pose a threat to their security when she falls in love with a boy she meets on the beach.

A man travels from Paris to Berlin. He’s looking for his wife. He will find her in a sanatorium and take her back to Paris with him. His wife goes to Berlin every year. She is desperately searching for her daughter. In 1989, their daughter was abducted at the age of three. And she has remained unaccounted for. One day the woman discovers a girl, Nina. She is a vagrant, a drifter. An itinerant, young woman. She roams around with another girl named Toni. She’s a girl who takes what she wants. A thief. The wife believes that Nina is her missing daughter.

Johannes is a loner who wants a better job. And then he meets Ana. Ana is attractive and even though her job is even less prestigious th an Johannes's, he falls for her. And then she quits her job to be with him (and be dependent on him) and suddenly things become much more serious. She has fallen for him. But does he still love her? Did he ever? Enter Sarah. Sarah is the daughter of Johannes's boss. He and she have a past. Will Sarah and what she represents be his future, and Ana just a memory, something he'd like to erase?

Petra professionally works as a thief abroad to finance the studies of her younger sister Franziska in Germany. When she returns, she realizes that her sister has a secret, too.

The dream of a different life: two drifters, off to see the world. An older and a younger woman are driving across the country in West Germany for a perfume company. But they have enough of their daily routine. So they decide to take their life in their own hands. They become robbers to realize their dreams: a place in Bali or an apartment in Paris. Christian Petzold’s perfect debut in feature-length film develops the overall design of his cinema for the first time, and with a sleepwalking certainty. A world where lapidary gestures are trying to hide the deepest melancholy and where characters try to override their inner stasis by an outward moving on. A word where all the sadness of existence gets comprehensible – and bearable by a laconic sense of humor.

Middle-aged lawyer Thomas (André Hennicke) meets Leyla (Nina Hoss), a younger cold reserved pretty blonde, in a suburban swimming-pool. Thomas falls in love with her and, after their paths keep crossing, he picks up the courage to ask her out for a date. Somewhat to his surprise she agrees, but arrives late and the restaurant is closing. They go back to his apartment for an impromptu pizza and, after a few drinks, she falls asleep on the couch. The next morning Thomas awakes to find Leyla and his laptop are missing. Hurt and baffled, Thomas investigates further only to discover that she has vanished from his life, her job and the city and he has been the victim of a meticulously-staged plan carried out by the scheming Leyla...

Depressing, dark love drama with thin story line, that makes you wonder whether the makers believe in life at all. The male protagonist is constantly running into problems and gets beaten up time and time again, so much so that after a while I could not help laughing, which cannot have been the intention of the makers: they are vèry, vèry serious. The crux of the film seems to be a sharp comment on the money driven German society, in which it is impossible to show any real affection; of course this could be a dilemma of the makers themselves: money is not the problem, but what you do with it. Not forgotten is to include an extreme right wing man whose self-proclaimed purpose in life it is to free the street of socially undesirable elements. It is all very heavy symbolism with no relief, but it is certainly well-made with a script that - as the film progresses - becomes less and less surprising. The two acting leads are good; fine cinematography. (jan onderwater)

2007 film by Christian Petzold

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