Charly Hübner

All his life, Michael Hartung, owner of a hopelessly debt-ridden video store, has bet on the wrong horse. When an ambitious journalist confronts him with the results of his research, everything changes for the charmingly melancholy Micha. Many years ago, as an employee of the Reichsbahn, he is said to have organized the largest mass escape in the GDR. Stasi files prove the case. He was apparently even imprisoned and then deported to an open-cast lignite mine. Seduced by a lavish salary, Micha confirms the story, although only fragments of it are true.

The film traces the rise and fall of GDR deep-sea fishing fleet - and the afterlives of its last surviving ships. Once more than a hundred strong, only a few vessels remain, now under new names, with new missions and new dreams: repurposed as rescue boats, cultural platforms, or sound spaces.

Lars Jessen accompanies Robert Habeck during the 2025 federal election campaign and talks to companions from all phases of Habeck's life. He examines the question of how politics functions in the current era and in the context of the eruption of democratic systems.

It's a hot, dry summer in Klein-Schappleben. Micha, a pretentious video game designer, wants to turn his late parents' dilapidated guesthouse into a luxury hotel with a wellness oasis. The villagers are skeptical, even though Micha loudly promises new jobs and prosperity. But his plans start to falter when the groundwater in the village dries up.

On December 23, you can meet Santa Claus almost anywhere - even on the Berlin-Bayern long-distance bus. But driver Robert, himself wearing a Santa hat, doesn't promise any presents. 25-year-old Felix, a new Berliner, is on his way to snowy Mittenwald to celebrate Christmas with his family and girlfriend. He is already planning his personal present: a marriage proposal to his girlfriend Saskia. But shortly before departure, a mishap occurs - the engagement ring goes missing. Felix's seatmate Hanna, who is also traveling to Mittenwald to spend the party with her grandmother, has just ended a relationship. The freedom-loving Hanna begins a casual flirtation with Felix, of all people, who is in a long-term relationship and doesn't at all fit in with her prey scheme. Over the next few years, their paths cross again on the Christmas drive home.

After a restless night, Reiner's doorbell rings. In front of it stands Morten de Sarg, which is actually his death. To his amazement, he is unable to let Reiner die; instead, the doorbell rings again. Sophia has a date with her ex-boyfriend for his mother Lore's birthday. Together they set out on a journey that ultimately leads them to Reiner's seven-year-old son Johnny, whom he hasn't seen for ages - all under the strict supervision of God and Archangel Michaela.

A snack bar owner smokes with his Muslim neighbor in the stairwell of their apartment building at night. Her husband is his good friend. They draw closer to one another as the nights go on and look out over the city to the dark satellites, the brutalist concrete buildings on the outskirts of the city - relics of the GDR past. A security guard watches over Objekt 95, a satellite town with a residential complex which many foreigners call home. While on patrol at night, he gets to know a young Ukrainian woman who fled her home country when the war broke out. He wants to protect her, while his friend, the “old security guard”, radios to him from an abandoned Russian barrack night after night. A woman from the train cleaning service drinks in a train station bar after her night shift. There, she meets a hairdresser. The two of them become friends and spend many nights together in the station. Every night, her desire grows even greater for this woman who is exactly as lonely as she is.

Desperate to help her son, Rabiye Kurnaz, a housewife and loving mother from Bremen, goes to the police, notifies authorities and almost despairs at their impotence and in the end, against all the odds, something truly remarkable happens.

When his grandmother Ella becomes increasingly confused and his grandfather Sönke simply doesn't want to part with his pub, the Dorfkrug, 47-year-old Ingwer Feddersen sees the time has come to return to his home village Brinkebüll. The village tavern isn't what it used to be - but that's also true for the whole village. Ingwer wonders when exactly was the point in time when the village of Brinkebüll went downhill? Was it in the 1970s when the hedges disappeared after the land consolidation and then the birds too? When larger and larger farms were built so that smaller ones had to give way? Is it perhaps his fault because he left his grandfather alone with gastronomy to study in Kiel? Based on Dörte Hansen's 2018 novel of the same name.

Literary adaptation: a handsome youth of humble origins rises in society through his connections made as an elevator attendant in a luxury hotel.