Top 50 German-Language Films

Director Hans-Jurgen Syberberg examines the rise and fall of the Third Reich in this brooding seven-hour masterpiece, which incorporates puppetry, rear-screen projection, and a Wagnerian score into a singular epic vision. Syberberg, who grew up under Nazi tyranny, ruminates on good and evil and the rest of humanity's complicity in the horrors of the holocaust.

Footage shot in and around the Algerian Sahara Desert, accompanied only by a spoken creation myth and the songs of Leonard Cohen.

The film expresses the emotional feelings of a man with special needs, and a beautiful woman.

PASSION is a film diary in which Reble accompanies his unborn child through the year, following the seasons until his birth. Reble's unfamiliar chemistry generates slowly pulsating structures and colors. Micro and macroscopic imagery build a near abstract, hypnotic landscape - an intimate perception of creation.

Fragments of several (mostly) silent films are shown. They're guided by quotes from, among others, Plato and Sappho and a soundtrack.

An experimental short film in which scenery and landscape are filmed from the viewpoint of secluded house.

Both parents of a young teen who walks with crutches secretly meet their lovers, who both surprise each other at the family's country home. The daughter arrives and initiates a guessing game of "Chinese roulette."

Roswitha is working to carry out illegal abortions, to support her husband and two children. The police discovers her and the husband is arrested. Roswitha gets involved in social work and politics.

After making the domestic servant pregnant, a woman who doubles his age, a young man of only seventeen years from the German bourgeoisie is sent by his family to the United States in order to avoid a huge scandal.

An epic documentary in two parts about life in the Styrian mountain village of St. Anna.

After an introductory sequence with the tip of a popular and a neo-gothic house one sees a horde of found-footage actors and actresses in gloomy sexual encounters.

Documentary examines the 'blind spot' of the evaluators of aerial footage of the IG Farben industrial plant taken by the Americans in 1944.

Anna, an artist, is obsessed with the invasion of alien doubles bent on total destruction. Her schizophrenia is reflected in the juxtapositions of long movie camera takes with violently edited montages: private with public spaces; black & white with colour, still photographs with video, earsplitting sounds with disruptive camera angles. Anna uses her body like a map; after a devastating quarrel with her lover, she paints red stitches on herself. Watching their scenes together, we realize how seldom, if ever before, the details of sexual intimacy have been shown in film from the point of view from a woman. Export privileges rupture over unity and never settles for one-dimensional solutions (Artforum, Nov. 1980)

A woman goes to bed, falls asleep, and begins to dream. This dream takes her to a landscape of light and shadow, evoked in a form only possible through classic cinematography.

Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland perform a hellish courtship in a nightmare of the American dream, created by manipulating old film.

This is about the life and myths about famous opera singer Maria Malibran (1808-1836). She died on the stage.

Documentary on physics and astronomy.

Cagliostro, an Italian adventurer rises through the French aristocracy on account of his magical tricks, medical knowledge and ability to foretell the future. When he falls from grace after a divination that predicts a dire future for Marie Antoinette, he sets in motion a plan that will result in revenge, but at a great price.

Flaming Ears is a pop sci-fi lesbian fantasy feature set in the year 2700 in the fictive burned-out city of Asche. It follows the tangled lives of three women - Volley, Nun and Spy.

Arnulf Rainer contorts his mind and body before the camera.

An aging doorman is forced to face the scorn of his friends, neighbors and society after being fired from his prestigious job at a luxurious hotel.

A woman presented as a "trinkerin" is having a special tour in Berlin. She bought herself a single-way ticket and will drink everywhere she can.

During Great Depression, a family is evicted from their apartment and with no other option they move to a tent camp called Kuhle Wampe.