Martin Held

A young shoemaker is arrested for stealing a small amount of money, and is jailed for fifteen years. Upon his release, he wants to get a permit to get a job and start anew, but finds that without a job he can't get a permit, and without a permit he can't get a job. Ensnared in the absurd net of Prussian bureaucracy, he can't see any way out. That is, until he enters a thrift shop and spots a Prussian officer's uniform that fits him like a second skin...

Vlassov is a Soviet spy who defects in France. He is whisked to the U.S, where Allan Davies takes over the case. After polygraph tests and cross-examinations, Vlassov names several Western European agents who are also spying for the Soviets. Davies wants to take the listed agents into custody; meanwhile, those on the list start dying under mysterious circumstances.

Bruno Stiegler, a boxing promoter with a disreputable past, returns from America to Berlin to make some big things again with his friends. Fatally, he is always preceded by some gentlemen from better circles who are developing amazing criminal activity in their old days. They are led by Oberlandesgerichtsrat a. D. Herbert Zänker, whom it still hisses, that he could bring in his term Bruno never behind bars.

On the last day of school, teachers and students have only one thing on their minds: finally, vacation. Corinna, the daughter of a prefabricated house manufacturer, has failed to pass her exams despite all her father's attempts to bribe her. With a little trick, her classmates want to fulfill the greatest dream of Corinna's teacher, Dr. Markus. A quick spin of the wheel of fortune and he has won a prefabricated house in a competition. Everything seems to be going well, but suddenly the deception is revealed.

April 1945. Because he stole two bars of chocolate, the soldier Rudi is sentenced to death by the court-martial judge Dr. Schramm. Rudi manages to escape from the firing squad at the last minute, and since the end of the war has been making a meager living as a street peddler. Years later, Dr. Schramm is now a respected public prosecutor. By chance, he runs into Rudi one day on the street. Afraid that Rudi will blow the whistle on him, Dr. Schramm wants to scare him out of town. He has Rudi arrested and bullied by the police.

Admiral Canaris is chief of the intelligence service of Nazi Germany. His department is quite successful and Hitler grants him all the money he wants for new developments. Still he's a thorn in the side of the Nazi chiefs, since he's not as unscrupulous as they want him and is known to criticize their ideology.

Paris, 1944. With France under Nazi occupation, General Quade entrusts an important mission to Furstenwerth, the commander of the Wermacht: to secretly transmit secret documents to the Allies. While carrying out this mission, the commander falls under the spell of a young French resistance fighter, Yvonne. He is discovered and arrested by the Gestapo. Yvonne and her group of resistance fighters will do everything to free him.

Dr. Fabian is the good soul at the University Surgical Clinic. Nicknamed "Paulchen" by his famous boss, Professor Spalke, the demigod in white brings joy to the lives of his patients with his cheerful disposition and is also tireless in his support and advice for his students. It's no wonder that women would love to get their hands on this dream man. But Dr. Fabian remains steadfast - until he meets the attractive anaesthetist Inge.

Baron Holberg, who looks back with pride on a long family tradition as hotel thieves, is horrified when his daughter Doris falls in love with the lawyer Robert Hammond, of all people, rather than choosing the art thief Sammy, as he would wish. Under the pretext that they are being pursued by the police, he lures his daughter away from the lawyer, but when he confesses the deception to her, Doris immediately sets off for Hammond's country estate near London. However, Hammond's father is not too fond of the connection either...

Violin virtuoso Fedor Varany meets on the train from Nice to Vienna Helene Samboni, the lover of the Chamber of Commerce President Alexander Grabner and still-wife of the artist Samboni. Fedor falls in love with her without betraying his identity.

Lieschen Müller is in her mid-20s, works a dull office job and fancies the handsome waiter from the diner down the street, wishing for a more exciting life. In a vivid, lucid dream she happens upon a gigantic fortune, allowing her to live out her wildest fantasies. Quickly, however, she realizes that that's not what makes her happy.

An industrialist's wife was killed and now her lover is accused of murder.

Florestan Mississippi, a public prosecutor by profession, visits a lady named Anastasia and, while drinking coffee with her, convicts her of poisoning her husband. At the same time, he asks for her hand in marriage, as he too has killed his wife with poison; the marriage is to be the "atonement" of the two poisoners. The four allegorical personifications in this comedy are, in addition to the loveless, absolute justice in the form of the prosecutor Mississippi, perfect equality, represented by the world revolutionary Saint-Claude, Christian love, embodied in the down-and-out, alcoholic tropical doctor Count Uebelohe-Zabernsee, and finally the "Frau Welt" of the old mystery play – Anastasia, who falls for everyone and betrays everyone, loves nothing but the moment, and dies with an invoked untruth on her lips.

An almost decent girl is a German-Spanish Romance of Ladislao Vajda from 1963. In Spain he was entitled Una chica casi formal on.

Towards the end of World War II, the fictitious French mountain village of Molinette is occupied by German troops. Because of sleep aid, served by his French girlfriend Hélène, the German corporal Karl Küppers misses the departure of his company to Russia. With the help of the purposeful Frenchwoman he becomes Ortskommandant.

Director Wolfgang Staudte who left East Germany in 1953 to make movies in West Germany, takes a few swipes at the West German judicial system in this fairly effective courtroom drama about the murder of a four-month-old baby. Police almost immediately arrest the mother Ingrid who is the mistress of the father, a rich business VIP married to another woman. His position and wealth keep him insulated from suspicion. A hot-shot lawyer has to overcome the unaccountably biased perceptions of the police, the judge, the prosecutor and almost everyone else in the judicial system. The defence lawyer, driven to an extreme, knows he has to find the real killer or his client will be convicted.

In Berlin, when the journalist Greg Bachmann is released from prison six months before the end of his sentence, there is a driver named Jupp waiting for him. Soon he learns that the famous journalist Cesar Boyd was the responsible for the shorter sentence. Cesar offers a position of his assistant to Greg; in return, Boyd would write his story about his interviews to war criminals and Greg would help him in other matters. Meanwhile Boyd welcomes the daughter of a deceased friend, Bettina, and he becomes her guardian.

A melancholic enjoyable journey by an old couple who escape the dreary everyday life of a Berlin retirement home for a day: at Pentecost, Margarete and Heinrich come up with the idea of visiting their nephew, whom they believe to have invited them to dinner. So they set off on their own, and although they don't always know where they are or why they have actually set off, they have a wonderful day. Even if the police find them and bring them back before they reach their destination.

After the First World War, history professor Abel Cornelius wants to distance himself from his previously published political views. This could go well, were it not for the student Max Hergesell, who provokes the professor to such an extent that he has to defend and justify himself, especially as he really has no taste for the current social changes. When the professor's older children arrange a party, Max Hergesell also turns up, much to Cornelius' surprise. To make matters worse, the student gains the sympathy of Cornelius' beloved baby Lorchen, who only wants to be put to bed by Max...

After World War II, a lot of people, who lived in the eastern parts of the Third Reich had to be relocated. One of them is Hugo Starosta (Martin Held) with his family. They live in a fortress. Hugo is unemployed, his children don't seem to like school, but somehow they managa to get through.

Based on a play by Gerhardt Hauptmann, the film details a bittersweet May-December romance between ageing Mathias Clausen (Albers) and young, beautiful Inken Peters (Annemarie Dueringer).

Summer 1938: renowned Viennese surgeon Professor von Benda is summoned by Gauleiter Seyss-Inquart to attend the Evian Conference on Jewish refugees. Disguised as a loyal Nazi physician, von Benda’s “mission” is to propose that participating nations purchase German Jews for 250 Reichsmark each, ostensibly saving them from deportation. Over ten days in Evian-les-Bains, von Benda navigates tense negotiations with diplomats and relief workers, confronting the moral abyss behind his government’s plan. As alliances form and falter around him, he watches the fates of refugees - and of Europe itself - unfold without judgment, bearing witness to a tragedy that history cannot forget.

The paths of three men cross for a short time in post-war Berlin. Robert and Willy are unattached and unemployed, Georg has joined them from Hamburg, he has a family and occasionally does something crooked. That's what the three of them are up to together: A safe is to be cracked, the plan comes from Robert. Then Else shows up, a former girlfriend of Robert's who now lives with his buddy Willy. She is interested in Robert again, but he turns her down. Blind with jealousy, Willy nevertheless feels betrayed and rats out their joint scheme to the police. As they stand in front of the strongbox, they are surrounded by police officers. One of them, Inspector Stern, suddenly recognizes in Robert the man who saved his life during the war.

The true story of a German agent sent to the USA in 1944 in order to stop the development of the atomic bomb.

Five musicians form in pre-war Berlin a dance band, which is largely successful thanks to the singer Marion. When love rivalries break out among the musicians and the Second World War begins, they are scattered in all directions. After the war, a coincidence brings them together again.

Twelve different episodes of erotic relationships are described as examples of modern love substitute.

Documentary about director Fritz Korner

A collection of sketches that tells the story of prostitution through the ages.

This film deals with the contrasts of the Wilhelminian era in Berlin: the splendor of the monarchy, the economic and intellectual vitality of the up-and-coming imperial capital on the one hand, and the misery of the proletarians in the tenements on the other. The documentary sets depressing images of the horrors at the front against the exhilaration of victory at the beginning of the First World War.

Arne Sucksdorff’s ethnographic feature documents the life and rituals of the Muria people in the Bastar jungle of central India, focusing on their traditions, music, and relationship to the natural environment. Presented with Sucksdorff’s lyrical visual style, the film was selected for the 1958 Cannes Film Festival.