Rolf Ludwig

Winterkind tells a tragic story of the Russian Yelena, who after seven years of captivity learns that her son Boris, born in the camp, has been adopted by a German couple.

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The story of a Leipzig family from 1987 to the Monday demonstrations in 1989. After the death of her father, a high-ranking officer in the People's Police, the daughter joins the resistance movement around St. Nicholas Church. Phenomena such as obedience, followership, spying and resistance are illustrated in this haunting film based on individual people. A film that provides food for thought for the discussion about the fall of the Berlin Wall and recapitulates contemporary history.

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A documentary and film essay about the artist scene in East Berlin during the 1950s.

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A surrealist tale set in the East German village of Stalina.

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The series "Achterbahn" is about friendships and the handling of difficulties and problems from children's everyday lives.

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Actor Ernst Stein, having abdicated from the stage in 1968 in protest of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, has long since retreated from the world around him. In a remote house encircled by an overgrown garden, he lives in a world of dreams and memories. Suddenly, in 1989, an out-of-kilter society sends forth its progeny. Young people, tramps and characters of all sorts take refuge with Stein for a short span, carrying the turmoil of the times into his house.

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In 1896 the Berlin noble doctor Dr. Wilhelm Holtfreter takes over his well-to-do wife Mathilde and takes over the country doctor's office in the Prussian district of Westprignitz from the late Dr. Tochtenhagen. His decision was met with incomprehension everywhere.

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In the winter of 1945/46, new teacher Hadubrant is tricked by Olly, the 14-year-old daughter of his landlady, into stealing a wild boar. It has fallen into Olly's trap, but as game is the property of the Soviet army, Hadubrant wants to put it to good use: school meals. But others in the village are also interested in the pig. The mayor wants it to fulfill his meat plan, the priest wants to swap it for coal to heat his church, the policeman wants to return it to its rightful owner, and some simply want to eat it. The pig keeps disappearing in mysterious ways. Hadubrant's commitment to his charitable cause finally earns him a delegation to the district town for "higher duties".

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Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, the paths of three people on the run cross by chance in the small Baltic Sea port of Rerig: Gregor, a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD); Judith, a Jewish woman; and a pastor who wants to save an Ernst Barlach sculpture classified as degenerate art. All those involved share a common fate and the dream of a fisherman's boy from Zanzibar, which is less a real goal than a utopia of a better future. Adaptation of Alfred Andersch's novel.

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A story about life and everyday problems of a few families from East Germany.

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Carola is a mischievous girl who doesn't care much for school- except for sports and recess, of course. Without her good friend Willi to keep her on the straight and narrow, she would really be in trouble. One day at school, Carola has an idea. She invents what she calls "International Ghosts' Day" and a ghost named "Buh" to go with it. When Buh turns out to be less-than-imaginary the two decide to switch places, with Buh taking on all the schoolwork, and Carola taking the opportunity to play practical jokes on all her friends...

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Kathe Kollwitz was 47 years old, and already a well established artist in Germany and abroad when Peter, her youngest son, volunteered to join the German army in WWI and was killed two weeks later. This painful tragedy changed Kollwitz's life and art forever.

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Fifteen-year-old Heinz Stielke is a Hitler Youth fanatic who is devastated to learn a hidden truth about his respected father who was a German officer in WWII: He was Jewish. Pushed out of his community after the discovery, young Heinz falls into a tailspin of alienation and anger. He is subsequently thrust into a series of social collisions across the war-torn German fatherland.

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In the forests of the Ore Mountains, on the border with Bohemia, a gang of smugglers is up to mischief. Anyone who dares to oppose them is murdered in cold blood. The locals are paralyzed by fear of the ominous bush ghost that is said to be behind it all. Then a stranger turns up at the remote forester's lodge and begins investigating a murder that took place twenty years ago. Having become wealthy in the Alaskan gold fields, Arndt is now looking for the woman he once loved and whose perjury landed him in prison. The forester and the weaver Eduard Hauser help him with his investigations. But Hauser himself soon becomes the victim of a sinister intrigue. Fritz Seidelmann, an unscrupulous profiteer who is after Hauser's fiancée Angelika, lures him into a trap. Hauser is arrested as an alleged bush ghost. For the time being, Arndt can do nothing for him ...

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The plot revolves around three men waiting to be deported in a prison. To escape the monotony, they form chess pieces from their bread rations, with which they then play against each other. Grünstein, a Polish Jew, proves to be a real talent, because although he is a beginner, he manages to defeat even the experienced player Lodeck, a German sailor, with his "Grünstein Variant".

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One day, the happily married Karl Lehmann is asked by his single colleague, Mrs. Schmidt, for an unusual service: She wants a child. Lehmann is willing to help. His wife Inge and Mrs. Schmidt have a child at the same time, and since the women like each other, they make an agreement. They share Karl Lehmann. One week Inge gets him, one week Mrs. Schmidt - always alternating. It could be nice if it weren't for the prudish, shocked or even envious people around them. However, some see it in a positive light. A Mr. Schmidt is interested in Inge's week off and a colleague Lehmann is interested in Mrs. Schmidt's week off. And it's not long before Mr. Karl Lehmann is booted out and seeks refuge with a waitress.

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Ten days in the life of socialist politician Clara Zetkin. In August 1932, she is summoned from Archangelskoje near Moskow to open the new legislative session because at seventy-five, she is the oldest representative in the German Reichstag. Although she is ill and almost blind, she see this as her chance to make her voice heard amid the growing Nazi influence in Germany.

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After a hot and steamy company party, Sibylle and Harald, both in their late thirties, spend the night together. He is a widower with two sons, with the younger son just entering school. She is single and relatively satisfied in her current relationship with a married colleague. When they meet again later, they resolve to enter into a strictly intellectual relationship.

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No one has any time for Moritz. And at school, things are not exactly the greatest either. Moritz runs away and moves into the inside of an advertising pillar. A speaking cat, a circus girl and a street sweeper become his new friends. Gradually, they help the young boy to realize that running away does not solve anything.

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The young Walter Retzlow, drafted into the guard team of a foreign labor factory in the last year of the war, receives the papers of a murdered anti-fascist by chance. He adopts the new identity, which promises him security.

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In a small village in West Prussia in the 1870s, Germans, Poles, Gypsies and Jews live together as neighbors. One night Johann, a German mill-owner, secretly opens the dam gates and floods the mill of his Jewish rival Levin. After his business is ruined and his calls for justice go unanswered, Levin leaves town.

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The wrenching story of a woman sentenced in 1934 to ten years in prison for antifascist activities. The love between her and her fiancée enables her to survive the tribulations of her time in prison, where she is one of few political prisoners.

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The "Astoria", an English luxury liner, collides with a freighter shortly before the end of its voyage and threatens to sink. Captain Mitchell, successful and envied, sets in motion an expensive rescue operation. He manages to avert a catastrophe and bring the passengers and the ship to safety. But the shipowner considers the operation excessive, calls Mitchell a coward and fires him. His career seems to be over. When his friends and his fiancée also make fun of him, he devises a cunning plan of revenge.

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A morality tale from the time of the Saxon Kingdom. The von Siebenthal volunteer fire department has nothing to do. When their local pub is in a very dilapidated state, but the landlord has no money to renovate it, the fire department tries to help out by setting fire to it themselves, but it doesn't quite work. They look for a new object to set fire to, the supposedly empty prison. But there is only one prisoner, who is heroically rescued by Captain Kaden.

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Germany at the end of World War II: Teacher Grübler lives in a small village in the Ore Mountains together with his 15-year old son Wolfgang. At school, the dutiful Grübler, a member of the NSDAP, teaches his pupils to volunteer for military service, but when his own son volunteers for the Waffen SS, he is nevertheless shocked and fears for his boy′s life. But Wolfgang starts to hate his father for his doubts: He thinks his father is a coward. In his desperation, Grübler chains and kidnaps his son to hide him in a dugout in the forest until the end of the war. In their shelter, father and son are fighting bitterly but when the Nazis who still believe in the "Endsieg" discover their hideout, Grübler sacrifices his life to save Wolfgang.

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The film is set in the 1930s in Germany. Maria Rheine and Mark Löwenthal, two young actors working in a small theater, are in love with each other. Their love affair is interrupted by Nazi racial policies; Mark is no longer allowed to perform in German theaters because he is a Jew. In order to continue acting, he joins the newly formed Jewish Theater in Berlin. Maria, who is not Jewish, faces no restrictions on her career, and she becomes a successful actress at a big theater in Munich. But her love for Mark eventually leads her to decide to sacrifice both career and security to remain close to him. She fakes a suicide, assumes a Jewish identity and, as Manja Löwenthal, joins the Jewish Theater.

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Based on a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm: Jakob is a poor farmer′s boy. Because of his timidity that even makes him run away from mice, he is often ridiculed by other people. Even the king is ill-disposed towards him. One day he sends Jakob to the devil to rob him of three golden hairs. This is supposed to be Jakob′s certain death. But naïve Jakob gets going and on his way even promises the oppressed subjects of the king to ask the devil for a way out of their misery.

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The fully loaded Trabi rolled towards the Baltic Sea and father Detlef is for once in excellent mood. Did he not agreed with his friend Alfred, located immediately each issue back with an urgent telegram from the resort. But as the two then adventurous go stalking in the jungle of the big city, they experience a failure after another. Sullen Detlef longs for marriage Trott and campground. There would be matched and over the years rather bland become married woman Eveline is undergoing a remarkable transformation.

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A conference is to be held once again to discuss the construction of a new dam, which Professor Paul Satie rejects. During a train journey, he spontaneously leaves the train. Here in Wolfsgrün, from 1948 to 1950, he helped build the old, now far too small dam as a youth brigadier. He and the others who helped build it have erected a monument to this. A monument with his name on it. Is that perhaps why he is against the new dam?

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) was the author of Werther, the romantic novel that was transformed into a play during Goethe's lifetime and which initiated the whole German romantic movement. The book's story tells of young love and suicide. In this East German film, based on a book by Thomas Mann, Lotte (Lilli Palmer) was the woman who served as the model for the heroine in the novel Werther. She comes to Goethe's hometown for a visit, and her experiences there eerily re-create episodes from the book. Goethe comes across as a pompous old bore, and his friends as pandering sycophants, in this very proper communist party-sponsored, anti-heroic movie.

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