Actor: Florentín Groll

The Red Violin

300 years of a remarkable musical instrument. Crafted by the Italian master Bussotti (Cecchi) in 1681, the red violin has traveled through Austria, England, China, and Canada, leaving both beauty and tragedy in its wake. In Montreal, Samuel L Jackson plays an appraiser going over its complex history.

Klimt

A portrait of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt whose lavish, sexual paintings came to symbolize the art nouveau style of the late 19th and early 20th century.

Shirley: Visions of Reality

A series of snapshots from the life of a fictional actress named Shirley serves to weave together thirteen paintings by Edward Hopper (e.g. "Office at Night", "Western Motel", "Usherette", "A Woman in the Sun") into a fascinating synthesis of painting and film, personal and political history. Each station in Shirley’s professional and private life from the 1930s to 1960s is precisely dated: It is always August 28/29 of the year in question, as the locations vary from Paris to New York to Cape Cod.

Amnesia

A young composer moves from Berlin to the island of Ibiza and begins a friendship with an elderly woman whose painful past has caused her to reject everything to do with Germany, including her native language.

The Decent One

Through previously undiscovered private letters, photos and diaries that were found in the Himmler family house in 1945, the "The Decent One" exposes a unique and at times uncomfortable access to the life and mind of the merciless "Architect of the Final Solution" Heinrich Himmler.

Ein Anfang von etwas

Herbert lives a rather simple life, left to his own devices. He works as a projectionist in a shabby Viennese movie theater and lives alone with his red nameless cat in the free caretaker's apartment of a somewhat run-down apartment building. Now and then he visits his mother in a nursing home, meets with an old friend of his father, or comes to meetings of a savings club. Saving money is pretty much the center of his life because he has a dream. He wants to emigrate to the U.S. to buy his own movie theater and to reunite with his long-lost father. But when Rita, a young student, moves into the apartment building things in his life are changed completely.

Das Mädchen auf dem Meeresgrund

When Hans Hass seeks a secretary for his Viennese office in the summer of 1947, Lotte Baierl applies for the job. She has just graduated from high school and is a big fan of Hass. Lotte is learning how to handle diving equipment and underwater cameras, as she wants to participate in the next expedition. Hass, who is initially against the participation of a woman, changes his mind. The TV movie tells the story of the two diving pioneers.