6 Movies Starring August Zirner

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East-Berlin, 1961, shortly after the erection of the Wall. Konrad, Sophie and three of their friends plan a daring escape to Western Germany. The attempt is successful, except for Konrad, who remains behind. From then on, and for the next 28 years, Konrad and Sophie will attempt to meet again, in spite of the Iron Curtain. Konrad, who has become a reputed Astrophysicist, tries to take advantage of scientific congresses outside Eastern Germany to arrange encounters with Sophie. But in a country where the political police, the Stasi, monitors the moves of all suspicious people (such as Konrad's sister Barbara and her husband Harald), preserving one's privacy, ideals and self-respect becomes an exhausting fight, even as the Eastern block begins its long process of disintegration.

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Monika, the host of a daily radio call-in show on the verge of beco- ming a thirtysomething, has almost given up all hopes of finding the man of her dreams when her gay brother convinces her to try it one last time -- via a contact advertisement. Suprisingly, she finds some- one she instantly falls in love with, only to find out that her "Mr. Perfect" is already married -- to her best friend...

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Pènktchen and Anton are closest of friends. Being the daughter of a wealthy surgeon, young Pènktchen lives in a great house. Her mother, who always travels through the world more for public relation reasons than for the social tasks she pretends to fulfill, is never available to her as a mother. Anton, son of a single and sick mother in financial trouble, does his best to help her out of it by working late. Pènktchen decides to help her only friend (as nobody else would anyway) and starts singing in public places. Trouble arises when Anton can't resist stealing a golden lighter and Pènktchen's secret life is discovered by her parents. Two troubled families finally can see the need for actions to be taken.

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In a German restaurant, Chef Martha Klein is the undisputed supreme ruler of the kitchen staff and woe to any customer who would dare criticize her cooking. Her life is firmly centered around cooking which takes on a obsessive level with stubborn single mindedness. Even when she is ordered to take therapy, she still constantly talks about her work and the iron clad control she relishes in her task. All that changes when her sister dies in a car accident, leaving her 8 year old daughter, Lina. Martha takes her niece in and while making enquiries for her estranged father, she struggles to care for this stubbornly headstrong child. Meanwhile at work, a new chef named Mario is hired on and Martha feels threatened by this unorthodox intruder. The pressures of both her private and work life combine to create a situation that will fundamentally call her attitudes and life choices into question while these interlopers into her life begin to profoundly change it.

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Though almost forgotten today, Veit Harlan was one of Nazi Germany's most notorious filmmakers. His most perfidious film was the treacherous anti-Semitic propaganda film Jud Süß (1940) - required viewing for all SS members. An unrepentant and blindly obsessive craftsman, no figure - save for Leni Riefenstahl - is as closely associated with the cinema of the Holocaust years. (Harlan's epic Kolberg (1945) was the basis for Inglourious Basterds (2009)'s pivotal film-within-a-film Stolz Der Nation.) This documentary is an eye-opening examination of World War II film history as well as the story of a German family from the Third Reich to the present; one that is marked by reckoning, denial and liberation.

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The personal journey of young Sita is not only an expedition into her family's burdened past during World War 2. It is also a journey to the abyss of modern European society, a trip which takes her from Berlin to Romania via Vienna and Warsaw - about losing one's homeland and discovering oneself, about hope and responsibility.