German films about coming home

Filmmaker Elia Suleiman travels to different cities and finds unexpected parallels to his homeland of Palestine.

After her fiancee cancels the wedding, Merlin's life changes drastically when she moves in with one of her brother's best friends.

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Two families attempt a daredevil plan to escape the GDR with a homemade hot air balloon, but it crashes just before the border. The Stasi finds traces of this attempt to escape and immediately starts investigations, while the two families are forced to build a new escape balloon. With each passing day the Stasi is closer on their heels – a nerve-wracking race against time begins.

In the aftermath of WWI, a young German who grieves the death of her fiancé in France meets a mysterious French man who visits the fiance’s grave to lay flowers.

A young Spanish woman who has newly moved to Berlin finds her flirtation with a local guy turn potentially deadly as their night out with his friends reveals a dangerous secret.

The true story of a young woman whose lust for life means she is determined to be so very much more than just another cancer patient.

It is a Saturday in autumn, and Karin and Simon are visiting their parents and youngest sister Clara. This family gathering provides the occasion for a dinner together, at which other relatives appear over the course of the day. While the family members animate the apartment’s space with their conversations, everyday activities and cooking preparations, the cat and dog range through the various rooms. they too become a central element in this quotidian familial dance that repeatedly manifests stylized elements, disrupting any naturalistic mode of presentation. In this way, adjoining spaces open up between family drama, fairy tale and the psychological study of a mother.

After five failed attempts to go to the United States, 18-year-old Ramón decides to look for a friend’s aunt in Germany, but never finds her. With no papers or money, and without knowing the language, he barely survives living on the street until he meets Ruth, an old retired nurse who doesn’t speak Spanish. Beyond language barriers and prejudices, they discover that solidarity and humanity make life bearable.

A pair of Tactical Units Police Officers from different walks of life come together to rescue an ambassador's daughter.

Athletic 12-year-old Maddy (Kristen Stewart) shares an enthusiasm for mountain climbing with her father, Tom (Sam Robards). Unfortunately, Tom suffers a spinal injury while scaling Mount Everest, and his family is unable to afford the surgery that can save him. Maddy decides to get the money for her father's operation by robbing a high-security bank. She relies on her climbing skills and help from her geeky friends (Max Thieriot, Corbin Bleu) to pull it off successfully.

Germany in the early 19th century. "Die Vermessung der Welt" follows the two brilliant and eccentric scientists Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Friedrich Gauss on their life paths.

TILT is a love story set against the backdrop of the changing political and social environment in Europe in the late 80's and early 90's. Can this love survive the challenges of emigration, a violent homeland and immoral social atmosphere thanks to a gang of adventurous friends?

It is the summer of 1980 in East Germany and, alone, Barbara is confined to living and working as a doctor in a small provincial town - her punishment for attempting to emigrate to the West. She has only one focus; to escape and for this, she has to wait patiently. Until Andre, her supervisor in the hospital, takes her off course. Are his motives of love or duty to the authorities? The day-to-day pretense, and content supervision slowly take their toll as the tension builds.

A wolf strives through the woods around an isolated German village. Jakob the young local police officer is onto him, but scents something more in the darkness. What he finds is a man, it seems, wild eyed, of wiry build, in a dress. He carries a katana, a Samurai sword. When the Samurai invites Jakob to follow him on his crusade towards the village, it becomes Jakob's mission to pursue the lunatic to end this wanton destruction. At the end of the night Jakob has experienced too much, is too far from whom he once was. Something hidden has been unleashed to meet the first rays of daylight.

Dawid, Vanessa and Ludwig are the finalists at a pitch-competition for a movie about the German Rap phenomenon CRO. As the three youngsters work out their extraordinary film ideas, they must fight through unexpected personal challenges.

Based on the incredible true story of Jesse Owens, the legendary athletic superstar whose quest to become the greatest track and field athlete in history thrusts him onto the world stage of the 1936 Olympics, where he faces off against Adolf Hitler's vision of Aryan supremacy. Starring Stephan James, Jason Sudeikis, Jeremy Irons, Carice Van Houten and William Hurt - Race is an enthralling film about courage, determination, tolerance, and friendship, and an inspiring drama about one man's fight to become an Olympic legend.

Painting is an unacceptable vocation for a woman in provincial Germany in the year 1900, but budding artist Paula Becker is determined to make her own rules.

During their childhood, Hanna and Clarissa were best friends. They spent every vacation together in an old summer house on a small island. Shortly after Hanna’s 9th birthday, they suddenly lost touch and only meet again unexpectedly 25 years later. Hanna is now married, has a seven-year-old daughter and is the chief resident physician at the hospital where she reunites with Clarissa. Her old friend has been brought to the hospital ER for overdosing on sleeping pills. The two women pick up their friendship where they left off and spontaneously decide to spend a few days on the island, just like in the old days. When Hanna learns that Maria, a playmate of hers from the island’s village, disappeared as a child and was never seen or heard from again, she begins to search in the past. Something horrible must have happened on the island and they must have been involved.

The popular cartoon cat and mouse are thrown into a feature film. The story has the twosome trying to help an orphan girl who is being berated and exploited by a greedy guardian.

Anxious to explore the mysterious hidden world under metropolitan Berlin, an international group of four urban explorers hires a local guide, Kris, who leads them into the maze of escape tunnels and subterranean fortifications under the city. When their guide has a bad fall, two of the girls in the group frantically set off to seek help while Denis, the young American, stays behind. Armin, a former East German border guard suddenly appears from nowhere. Out of sheer desperation, Denis allows Armin to lead them and their unconscious guide to safety and it is at this moment that Denis realizes he has just made the biggest mistake of his life!

When siblings Judy and Peter discover an enchanted board game that opens the door to a magical world, they unwittingly invite Alan -- an adult who's been trapped inside the game for 26 years -- into their living room. Alan's only hope for freedom is to finish the game, which proves risky as all three find themselves running from giant rhinoceroses, evil monkeys and other terrifying creatures.

Hartmut Mackowiak, a German taxi driver, tries to help 6 year old Turkish girl to find her mother.

Parallel love stories of three young women in Berlin: Hannah - an unhappy attorney who sexually demeans herself in order to get at least some love and romance, Leni who runs a coffee shop and has just been ditched by her long term boyfriend, and Vivienne who ends up falling in love with a puppy-eyed pasta designer with 21 dogs.

A luxury hotel. Steaks frizzle, muffintops getting massaged. Clemens (rare) joins the wellness area as a rookie. Lara (well-done) needs to assert herself in the kitchen pack. The elevator brings the two of them together. They encounter each other, until they clash.

A German man fells in love with a Turkish woman and changes his lifestyle for her family.

Breathtaking in its subtle beauty, Harvest is an achingly romantic tale of an innocent but ever increasingly passionate affair that develops between two simple farmhands. Life on a farm is all that sullen teen Marco knows- leading a perfunctory and quiet life of working, going to school and avoiding the advances of girls. However, his self-imposed solitude ends when curly-haired Jakob, rejecting the banking world for farming, arrives to train on the farm. Although initially cautious and tentative with each other, it is soon obvious that the unspoken sexual tension is becoming increasingly hard to resist - something a spontaneous trip to Berlin. Proving that true love can blossom in even the most unlikely of places, Harvest is as rich and rewarding as it is heart-warming.

An almost romantic comedy on the edge: Holocaust researcher Toto is having a major life crisis. Just when things at home and work could not get worse, he unwantedly gets a new assistent assigned to himself. Zazie is french, jewish, slightly germanophobe and supposed to help Toto to prepare a major congress. As the star of the congress suddenly wants to pull out, the problems are piling up and the two have to fix it.

After aspiring poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe fails his law exams, he's sent to a sleepy provincial court to reform. Instead, he falls for Lotte, a young woman who is promised to another man.

Canadian scientist, Dr Geoff Burton takes up a position at a new institute in wintry Dresden in order to contribute to their most important project—a human regeneration gene—that also has the potential to make something miraculous out of a personal tragedy that has haunted him for years.

The story of a man who murdered thirty-two people, gained power, and then got afraid because too many people wanted to kill him. One August morning, he disappeared. For fifteen years, everyone believed him dead.

An overwhelmed family man (Bastian Pastewka) starts to produce counterfeit money in his own run down print shop.

Dramatised origin story of one of Germany's most beloved contemporary comedians.

On the request of his mother Gitte, Marko, who has been living in Berlin for years, drives off to the countryside to visit his parents. His hopes of spending a quiet and relaxing time with his family fall short when Gitte surprises everyone by revealing that she has recovered after a long mental illness. Marko is the only one who respects her wish from now on to be treated as a full member of this family and, as a result, ends up tipping more than just the delicate balance of his parent’s seemingly harmonious relationship.

Europe 1990, the Berlin wall has just crumbled: Katrine, raised in East Germany, but now living in Norway for the last 20 years, is a “war child”; the result of a love relationship between a Norwegian woman and a German occupation soldier during World War II. She enjoys a happy family life with her mother, her husband, daughter and granddaughter. But when a lawyer asks her and her mother to witness in a trial against the Norwegian state on behalf of the war children, she resists. Gradually, a web of concealments and secrets is unveiled, until Katrine is finally stripped of everything, and her loved ones are forced to take a stand: What carries more weight, the life they have lived together, or the lie it is based on?

Quotas for women, parking spaces for women, online shopping, small talk and gossip. Software developer Erol, porta-potty rep Lars, and commercial pilot Helmut are licking the wounds of their masculinity – a female-free zone is what’s needed! In the boiler room of their recently built housing complex, the three stressed husbands create a secret refuge where they can watch football, eat fast-food, drink beer and curse the opposite sex undisturbed. When Aykut, the complex’s facility manager, discovers their last bastion of masculinity, he threatens to close it down. One thing is for sure, the men are not going to give up their little slice of paradise without a fight. Based on the stage play bearing the same name, director Franziska Meyer Price allows men to return to rebellious ladhood.

A disfigured concentration-camp survivor, unrecognizable after facial reconstruction surgery, searches ravaged postwar Berlin for the husband who might have betrayed her to the Nazis.

A mute man with a violent past is forced to take on the teeming underworld of a near-future Berlin as he searches for his missing girlfriend.

Inexperienced guardian angel, Buddy (Michael Herbig) arrives to assist Eddie (Alexander Fehling) with getting his life back on track, but instead only causes more chaos.

Master filmmaker Alexander Sokurov (Russian Ark) transforms a portrait of the world-renowned museum into a magisterial, centuries-spanning reflection on the relation between art, culture and power.

Two outsiders travel around the countryside during school holidays.

In the middle of the night, a special police force storms the bedroom of management consultant Juliane Schubert. Just returned from a business trip to the Middle East, Juliane is questioned after her arrest by the commissioners Theissen and Hindrichs: They should have rented apartments and cars that should serve to prepare a terrorist attack. The evidence is overwhelming. Has anyone gained access to the businesswoman's computer, stolen her virtual identity and used it for criminal purposes?

Christmas is just two weeks away, it is pouring with rain, and Ben is struggling to get into the Christmas spirit. Suddenly, Bens life takes a turn for the better when Santa Niklas Goodfellow and his Christmas caravan come crashing down to Earth in the middle of thunderstorm and land in Foggy Lane. Santa is on the run from the ruthless Gerold Geronimus Goblynch and his army of nutcrackers who have outlawed all of the old magical ways and have transformed the bright and peaceful Christmas world into a dark and hostile place, governed by greed and money. Goblynch has banned work for all Santas and confined the Christmas angels to tiny prison cells, where they can no longer hear the dearest wishes of children. Goblynch also wants to force Santa Niklas Goodfellow, the last real Santa, to work for his commercialized Christmas company and forces him to do hard labour in the ordering department of the Christmas Palace.

Two girls from very different social backgrounds discover, at the age of 25, that they had been switched at birth.

Henry is a playboy who has no idea that he is the father of a beautiful, cute girl out of a One-night-Stand. Her mother left the daughter in front of Henry door after her husband realized after 8 years of marriage that he is not the father so their relationship now is breaking up... By the way: Kokowääh, is how a German (in this case an 8 Year old child) that has never heard the dish before - would pronounce "Coq Au Vin" (chicken in a wine sauce).

The "Bloods" are the most intimidating and violent gang in the city. A lawless city... where gangs rule the streets... The vicious and blood thirsty murderer Slater is their leader. The city is his domain... he rules! There are those who are not members of gangs such as Mikey and his friends. Mikey lives on the edge, he is daring and always in trouble and fights. His brother Mathis and his friends try to avoid trouble at any cost. Revenge becomes the motive to Mikey when his brother Mathis goes missing and is killed..... Written by Generation X Group GmbH

Faust inhabits an earthy, 19th-century world of primitive autopsies and medical rituals. He becomes obsessed with the beautiful Margarete and desperately turns to a physically grotesque moneylender to conjure their union.

In the aftermath of World War II, a British colonel and his wife are assigned to live in Hamburg during the post-war reconstruction, but tensions arise with the German widower who lives with them.

Based on the true story of Max Schmeling. A national hero in the 1930's when he became World heavyweight champion. He lost favour with the Nazi regime when he lost to a black man, Joe Louis, and is sent to the front in the hope he will be killed in battle.

In 1938 Hans Zeisig, an apolitical comedian, impersonator and cabaret actor, flees with a Russian passport (instead of American, which he would have preferred) from Nazi-Berlin, and finds himself in the legendary Hotel Lux, the 'lost paradise' of the Comintern, in Moscow. Everyone believes that Zeisig is a man named Hansen, Hitler's personal astrologer. But Zeisig quickly realizes that he's gone from the frying pan into the fire. In the Hotel Lux he meets his friends Frida and later Meyer again, still passionate communists. For the three idealists an adventure between love and death begins to run his course.