Neuer Deutscher Film Report (1967)

Aguirre, the Wrath of God

A few decades after the destruction of the Inca Empire, a Spanish expedition led by the infamous Aguirre leaves the mountains of Peru and goes down the Amazon River in search of the lost city of El Dorado. When great difficulties arise, Aguirre’s men start to wonder whether their quest will lead them to prosperity or certain death.

Paris, Texas

A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his family and disappeared four years earlier.

The Tin Drum

Oskar Matzerath is a very unusual boy. Refusing to leave the womb until promised a tin drum by his mother, Agnes, Oskar is reluctant to enter a world he sees as filled with hypocrisy and injustice, and vows on his third birthday to never grow up. Miraculously, he gets his wish. As the Nazis rise to power in Danzig, Oskar wills himself to remain a child, beating his tin drum incessantly and screaming in protest at the chaos surrounding him.

The Marriage of Maria Braun

Maria marries a young soldier in the last days of World War II, only for him to go missing in the war. She must rely on her beauty and ambition to navigate the difficult post-war years alone.

Effi Briest

When 17-year-old Effi Briest marries the elderly Baron von Instetten, she moves to a small, isolated Baltic town and a house that she fears is haunted. Starved for companionship, Effi begins a friendship with Major Crampas, a charismatic womanizer.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

Emmi Kurowski, a cleaning lady, is lonely in her old age. Her husband died years ago, and her grown children offer little companionship. One night she goes to a bar frequented by Arab immigrants and strikes up a friendship with middle-aged mechanic Ali. Their relationship soon develops into something more, and Emmi's family and neighbors criticize their spontaneous marriage. Soon Emmi and Ali are forced to confront their own insecurities about their future.

Stroszek

Bruno Stroszek is released from prison and warned to stop drinking. He has few skills and fewer expectations: with a glockenspiel and an accordion, he ekes out a living as a street musician. He befriends Eva, a prostitute down on her luck and they join his neighbor, Scheitz, an elderly eccentric, when he leaves Germany to live in Wisconsin.

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum

After a chance encounter with a wanted man, a woman is harassed by the police and press until she takes violent action.

The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick

Goalkeeper Josef Bloch is sent off after committing a foul during an away game. This causes him to lose his bearings, and he wanders aimlessly through the city streets and spends the night with the box-office attendant of a movie theatre.

Yesterday Girl

A young German woman searches for happiness, liberation, and independence in the illusive wake of a transformative national recovery.

The City Tramp

A tramp finds a gun lying in the street.

Flood

When Jonas loses his job at a Hamburg startup company, he doesn’t have the heart to tell his girlfriend Katharina, as her nerves are already on the edge with her final law exams coming up. Every morning he leaves their flat and drift aimless through the metropole on endless underground rides. After a chance meeting with his former boss Marc, Jonas starts to observe the young manager. His curiosity gradually turns into obsession, small and bigger everyday lies become a kind of survival strategy for Jonas. While Katharina notices his increasingly odd behavior, Jonas is losing control over events more and more. Flood deals with feelings of powerlessness of the individual facing a growing competitive and performance pressure. The fear of failing in a perceived competition of life kicks off a spiral of wrong decisions, with no apparent way out. Georg Pelzer’s debut was shot basing on a 20-page plot description, dialogues and actions where improvised with the actors on location.

The Kids Turned Out Fine

This anti-coming-of-age film follows Generation Y characters as they chase the desire for radical self-realisation.

The Assembly

Michael Sheen faces the interview of a lifetime with The Assembly, a group of autistic, neurodivergent, and learning disabled people. Expect revelation, chaos, and a lot of laughs.

Sonita

If 18-year-old Sonita had a say, Michael Jackson and Rihanna would be her parents and she'd be a rapper who tells the story of Afghan women and their fate as child brides. She finds out that her family plans to sell her to an unknown husband for $9,000.

Tuono

Plot unavailable

Building Bastille

A half a billion dollar project, a crushing architectural challenge and impossible deadline, two warring political titans and an architect who has never built anything. What could go wrong?

Skip Day

For seniors in Pahokee, a small, mainly African-American industrial town on Florida's Lake Okeechoboee, the Monday after prom is 'Skip Day.' Dozens of the students, miss their lessons, driving 60 miles to hang out and ponder their futures on the windy dunes of the Atlantic shoreline. The film intimately observes the shared joys of communal activity and extravagant display which bind these boisterous teenagers in their rites of passage towards an uncertain adulthood.

Kecksburg

A reporter investigates a mysterious crash and uncovers more than an object, but a massive government conspiracy. Inspired by the real life events of December 9, 1965 and one of America's most mysterious UFO incidents.

Freaks and Geeks: The Documentary

The creators and actors from the TV show 'Freaks and Geeks' share their untold stories and pivotal moments from the making of the series that only aired for one season.

Skin Deep

A multi-racial group of college students in a weekend racial sensitivity workshop discuss affirmative action, self-segregation, internalized racism and cultural identity. The film continues as they return to their campuses (University of Massachusetts, Texas A&M, Chico State, and U.C. Berkeley) and visit home.

Gold of the Seas

Because he found a box washed up by the sea holding unknown contents, a poor and despised fisherman and his daughter are suddenly courted by everyone in the village.

Save the Children

A concert film highlighted by performances from Marvin Gaye, Jerry Butler, and Roberta Flack.

The Toledo Report

A series of 15 prints inspired by "A Report for an Academy" by Franz Kafka, provokes this look at the life of the artist and social activist Francisco Toledo.

L'affaire Matzneff

About the Gabriel Matzneff affair and pedophilia in French culture and society from the 1950s to the present day. "It was not very difficult to know who Matzneff was at the time." Vanessa Springora denounces thus, in an interview with the Parisian , the support which benefited the writer Gabriel Matzneff , in the years 1970 and 1980. The author fifties then maintains an affair with the young girl, aged 14 years. A relationship under control that the editor tells in Le Consentement (éd. Grasset), published Thursday. "After having analyzed the work " , the Paris public prosecutor's office announced Friday January 3 the opening of an investigation for "rapes committed on the person of a minor of 15 years".

Exoplanètes : les chasseurs de mondes

Plot unavailable

The Metamorphosis of Birds

Filmmaker Catarina Vasconcelos sifts through the memories of her ancestors. Her naval officer grandfather, Henrique, who married her grandmother, Beatriz, on her 21st birthday, spent extended periods at sea, leaving her with six children. This is the beginning of a generational saga.

Gunda

A glimpse into the raw and simple power of nature through encounters with farm animals: the eponymous Gunda, a mother pig; two cows, and a one-legged chicken.

The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat

A group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

Alison

Raped. Disemboweled. Nearly decapitated. Dumped on the outskirts of a nature reserve, dead - or so they thought. She needed a hero that night, so that's what she became. This is Alison's tale. A tale of monsters, miracles and hope.

Bizarre Dinosaurs

While dinosaurs may have been some of the mightiest creatures ever to have walked the earth, they also could have been among the most bizarre. With extreme, exaggerated body parts, some predators were loaded with outlandish or disproportionately sized appendages. Join world-renowned paleontologists and travel the globe to unearth some of the lesser-known but most surprising members of the dinosaur family: Mamenchisaurus, whose neck alone was longer than the rest of its body; Chasmosaurus, adorned with a fashionable crown of frilly spikes to attract the eyes of potential suitors; Spinosaurus, with massive extensions from its vertebrae that could have supported a sail or a hump; and Parasaurolophus, whose tube-like head crest may look odd to us, but was a mating magnet back in the day.

Butenland

Jan Gerdes is a third-generation dairy farmer, but he struggles with his conscience when the milk yield decreases and he has to sell his cows to the slaughterhouse. After suffering a burn-out, he decides to give up his farm. On the day his last cows are due to be transported to the slaughterhouse, he finds that there's no room for twelve of the cows. Instead of ordering another transport, he and his partner Karin Mück decide to keep them. This is the birth of 'Hof Butenland' - the first cow retirement home in Germany.

La quête de Khate

This short documentary presents the process surrounding Khate Lessard's sex reassignment surgery.

Mucha: The Story of an Artist Who Created a Style

Czech painter and illustrator Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) ranks among the pioneers of the Art Nouveau movement at the end of the 19th century. Virtually overnight, he becomes famous in Paris thanks to the posters that he designs to announce actress Sarah Bernhardt’s plays. But at the height of his fame, Mucha decides to leave Paris to realize his lifetime project.

The Exit of the Trains

A film composed entirely of archival photographs and documents related to the Iași Pogrom of June 1941. The first part of the film consists of photographs of the victims, accompanied by statements and testimonies about their fate. The second part, shorter, is a montage of photos of the pogrom itself.

Oeconomia

What is money? What are debts? What are the consequences of both? And how can images be found for them? In Oeconomia, Carmen Losmann undertakes a journey in the strategic heartlands of neoliberal policy.