DDR - die entsorgte Republik

On February 26, 1920, Robert Wiene's world-famous film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari premiered at the Marmorhaus in Berlin. To this day, it is considered a manifesto of German expressionism; a legend of cinema and a key work to understand the nature of the Weimar Republic and the constant political turmoil in which a divided society lived after the end of the First World War.

A documentary on the late American entertainer Dean Reed, who became a huge star in East Germany after settling there in 1973.

In 1946, just after the end of World War II, a secret organization of Holocaust survivors plans a terrible revenge: since the Nazis have killed millions of Jews, they will kill millions of Germans.

Former "Titanic" satire magazine editor Martin Sonneborn takes an undercover trip around Berlin and discovers the East-German mentality and what is left of the socialist German Democratic Republic.

Emma Freese is desperate when her husband Alfred falls ill at the Howaldtswerke in Kiel. How is the family supposed to get by without their wages? The war has scarred this generation, but now things are supposed to be looking up. The workers want their fair share and are fighting for an income that also gives them room to live. In October 1956, 34,000 metalworkers in the shipyards and factories of Schleswig-Holstein walk off the job to fight for justice and their dignity. This strike is still regarded as the toughest and longest in Germany. Employers and politicians stand in the strikers' way.

Daniel lives in Bernau, a small town north of Berlin.This film tells this 21-year-old’s story and describes the radical right-wing milieu in which he grew up. In his candid portrait of how right-wing radicalism breeds, Daniel explains how difficult it is to break out of a vicious circle of violence, self-hatred and a right-wing extremist frame of mind.

In October 1987, the documentary film collective Amber Films from Newcastle became the first British film crew ever allowed to shoot in East Germany. They filmed the workers of the state-owned fishing concern in Warnemünde and a brigade of crane operators at the state Warnow dockyards. Just two years later, East Germany was history, including most of the jobs it once provided. Twenty-five years later, in 2014, the filmmakers returned to an utterly different Rostock. They visited the people they had filmed in 1987. Together, documentarians and subjects look at excerpts from the earlier film, and talk about the enormous changes the men and women experienced, how they dealt with them, and how they feel today.

At Hotel Astoria, the former hotspot of Leipzig, guests were served champagne and turtle soup while the Stasi listened in. Animated memories from times gone by.