Günther Simon

Poor weavers Hans und Kumpan try to enter a town surrounded by a tall, impenetrable wall, where everyone is apparently very happy. When they finally make it inside, the tyrannical Emperor Max demands they make him new clothes that would "bring all creatures to their knees." Hans and Kumpan claim only intelligent people can see the robe, and in order to prove himself clever, the emperor haughtily displays himself before his subjects wearing his new invisible regalia.

Open details →

Helmut Kamp, the construction brigade leader, a man no longer young, life immediately confronted several difficult and woeful problems. The birth of a son, the tragic death of his wife, the relationship of his daughter Ingrid with Dr. Beißert coincided with the need to move to an uninhabited area where a nuclear power plant will be built. Kamp, Ingrid and the members of the friendly brigade decide to act as the duty and the feeling of partnership prompts them, and gradually they all become participants in the new construction...

Open details →

This is a political picture about the Bulgarian revolutionary Georgi Dimitrov. In 1933 during the Reichstag Fire Trial trumped-up charges of having set the Reichstag on fire were brought against him. At the trial Dimitrov exposed the machinations of the Nazis and turned from a defendant into an accuser. Central to the story is the face-to-face political duel between Dimitrov and Goering. Dimitrov's interactions with ordinary Germans, the memories of his wife Lyuba Ivoshevich, and the meetings with his mother Parashkeva alternate with documentary shooting scenes from the time of Nazi Germany.

Open details →

Major Bert Harkus takes over the artillery regiment in Jesnack after graduating from the military academy. The troop proudly presents itself during an exercise. But apart from some good results in shooting, Harkus soon realizes that there are a few problems. As he does not believe that constant combat readiness is guaranteed, he orders far-reaching changes and does not only make friends. Only gradually do the troops pull themselves together.

Open details →

A socialist story of "atoms for peace" and compulsory labor in an East German uranium mine under Soviet control.

Open details →

East German film about the history of Red Orchestra, a real life German pro-Soviet spy ring created after the rise of Hitler that turned into a resistance movement led by a leftist Nazi officer, Harro Schulze-Boysen, and Arvid Harnack.

Open details →

Paul Pospischiel loses his job in the great colliery collapse in the Ruhr, retrains and builds a new life for himself. One day, he receives a letter from his mother, which tears him from his comfort zone and triggers a serious conflict. She has discovered the man who sent his father to a concentration camp decades ago and is therefore responsible for his death. The mother demands accountability from this man. Paul decides to confront the suspected informer and murderer...

Open details →

Dr. Gerd Thiessen, an experienced veterinarian, takes up a new job at a publicly owned manor. His research colleagues are less than thrilled about his ideas and modification proposals. Thus, the pretty and confident veterinarian Sabine Ladenbach becomes his only ally and soon they fall in love with each other. When Thiessen’s wife Eva notices that her husband is growing away from her, she starts to fight for him. Eventually, Thiessen realizes that Eva is the woman of his life, both privately and professionally. At the same time, he figures out that he needs the support of his team to achieve success in his field.

Open details →

Dr. Roth, a respected veterinarian and head of a state-owned stud farm, had accepted papers from a man for safekeeping when he was 16 years old, toward the end of the war. Years later, they are picked up. However, this act proves to be his undoing. Before he can ask others for help, he is found dead in his car. Since espionage material is found in the immediate vicinity of the car, the police hand the case over to the State Security Service, which determines that Dr. Roth was murdered. Young Thomas, whose friend and guardian was Dr. Roth, investigates on his own to clear the man who had his complete trust. In doing so, he puts his own life in danger. Thanks to a tip from stud farm employee Renate, the security officers are able to expose the murderer, uncover his connection to the West German secret service, and clear Dr. Roth.

Open details →

Open details →

This East German movie was co-produced with studios in Hungary and Yugoslavia, with many interesting location shots (border checkpoint to West Berlin, the Gellert bath in Budapest, and more). The plot is about French drug dealers, who obtain heroin somewhere in the Middle East, and smuggle it in several steps to East Berlin, and from there to France (or so it appears), killing when necessary. The hero is an officer of East German customs, who with detective work, some masquerade, and occasional violent action ultimately unravels the whole network, of course with the support of the local customs departments.

Open details →

At the VII Party Congress of the SED, a delegate tells a reporter his life story: 18-year-old returning soldier Georg Lendau ends up in a small village in 1945. He is starving and sick. Mayor Kallam helps. Later, they meet again; Kallam is now the director of a heavy engineering company. He gives Georg, who is a lathe operator, work. But Kallam has more plans for him and wants to send him to university. Georg refuses. An extra shift, which he only did so that he could buy his future wife wedding shoes, brings him into conflict with backward colleagues - and the realization that you first have to work better if you want to live better. He followed this insight with action, becoming a master craftsman, comrade and student.

Open details →

Jürgen Fohrmann works as a hauer underground. In the course of the coal crisis, his mine closes - he loses the work. In this mood, his wife's prosperity thinking gets on his nerves - his marriage threatens to break. The dismissed coal buddy applys, first becomes an auxiliary worker, but then receives a job in an automated operation of the electrical industry and believes to have socially risen through this "clean work". Fohrmann quickly realizes that wearing a "white coat" is only seemingly better than the arduous work in the pit and understands that he can no longer stay out of the work struggles of the buddies.

Open details →

The captain of a ship of the merchant navy is always on the move because of his job – and has a different girlfriend in every harbour. But his friends think that he should change his way of life. Thus, they take the lovely reporter Eva on board for a trip to Leningrad. But at first, Eva′s presence causes a lot of upheaval on board.

Open details →

Alfons is very unlucky boy. Even when he intends well everything is going wrong, so his life is full of various mishaps.

Open details →

Adam receives a flashlight with special powers: every liar it shines on flies into the air. Production was cancelled in 1965/66 due to the film's political content. Only in 1989/90 could the director reconstruct the film, where missing sounds and images are replaced with script inserts.

Open details →

Was it an act of sabotage or willful negligence? The non-party engineer Heinz Solter is suddenly arrested and accused of approving a defective pipeline that caused a half million loss to his company. At first, the case seems clear-cut for the state prosecutor, but when he probes deeper, he discovers that Solter had acted against his better judgment due to the pressure from his career-driven and authoritarian boss.

Open details →

Spain in the 1930s. The film tells of the fight of international troops against General Franco's army. It tells of the fate of three brigadists, the American Gary, the German Hans and the Englishman Joe, who are taken prisoner by Franco's army. Their attitude in this difficult situation is a living example of international solidarity and creates a memorial.

Open details →

The marriage of Katrin and Richard Lot has become a routine. She has a career and he, as a Marine officer, comes home only once every fourteen days. The children greet him with joy, but she greets him only with anxiety because their marriage is missing its key ingredient: love. She wants a divorce, but he refuses mainly out of comfort as well as due to pressure from the party. Katrin finds a strange solution: she shoplifts and is put on probation for three months. This is enough to force Richard into a divorce because he is concerned about the "moral liability" of his wife.

Open details →

The famous actor Ralf Horricht is a pain in his current director's butt while shooting a comedy about the army. So Horricht believes it a joke, when he receives an induction-order as reserve-officer... but the captain tries his best to make him realize this is no laughing matter.

Open details →

Fritz Weineck, a worker′s son from Halle, loves music – and dreams to make a living out of it one day. When his friend Alfons, a World War I veteran, gives him a trumpet as a gift, Fritz seems to come closer to fulfil his dream. But then, Fritz realizes that after the end of the German empire workers still have to desperately fight for their rights, and decides to use his instrument for political means: At a meeting of militant workers, he uses his trumpet as a signal horn. But Fritz suffers a severe setback when a comrade dies in the fight for an arms depot because of his fault.

Open details →

Daniela – a single mother, whose boyfriend left for the US – believes wholeheartedly in Cuba's revolutionary new order. Meanwhile, in Florida, a plot is afoot. Under the command of an American officer, four Cubans ex-patriots and a Guatemalan land on the Cuban coast to prepare a US invasion of the island. Daniela's superior, the corrupt Cuban officer Palomino, is secretly helping the invaders and the young woman becomes entangled in the intrigue.

Open details →

Stasi agent Alexander Berg has to uncover a plot of sabotage.

Open details →

A two-part East German documentary tracing Russia’s transformation from the Tsarist Empire to the Soviet Union, from the 1917 October Revolution to the achievements of the space program. Directed by Andrew Thorndike and Annelie Thorndike, the film assembles extensive archival footage to chart political upheaval, ideological consolidation, and technological ambition in twentieth-century Russia. Produced by DEFA and first broadcast on East German television in 1963.

Open details →

The World War II. 1944. Nazis staged a cache which stores archival documents of its agents, rescued from the east during the retreat, near a small German town Ostburga.

Open details →

At the beginning of the 1960s, a German turns up on behalf of the NATO in the British village of Rocksmouth. NATO wants to establish a naval base in Rocksmouth, but first, the German envoy has to salvage an old ship wreck. In 1942, the "Princess of India" was supposed to bring children to safety in Canada but was sunk by a German submarine at departure. 58 people were killed, most of them children.

Open details →

Bundeswehr soldier Klaus’ regiment is stationed in France, to take part in NATO maneuvers. The soldiers are ordered to be kind to the populace, since the West German High Command wishes the French to forget the atrocities that were committed during the Second World War. Klaus falls in love with Jeanne, the daughter of the local mayor. He discovers that his commanders intend to demolish the ruins of a local church, in which civilians were murdered by the German occupation forces at 1944. A local journalist who researches the event discovers that West German General Rucker ordered the massacre, but he is mysteriously murdered. Klaus defies his commanding officer Siebert, who instructs him to steal the documents indicting Rucker, and hands the evidence over to Jeanne.

Open details →

Based on an authentic case from the 1920s. The head country constable Heinz Lippert arrests the Polish farm worker Jakubowski on suspicion of murdering a child - his adopted son. Although he has insufficient evidence, public prosecutor Becker takes the case to court. Jakubowski is sentenced to death, the "Polish murderer" fits in with the propaganda of the time. Lippert, encouraged by the communist editor Hartmann, tries to prevent the sentence from being carried out and even investigates the real perpetrator. In vain, the death sentence was carried out prematurely. After the Nazis seized power, the public prosecutor, now an SS leader, had the men who had uncovered the true facts arrested. Lippert joins the underground resistance.

Open details →

Professor Heger's son was shot by the Gestapo during the war. Dr. Bram was also responsible for his death. After the war, working in Heger's clinic, Bram tells the professor about his guilt. Considering Bram a traitor, Heger refuses to work with him. Bram flees to West Germany. Soon the professor, who has decided in his heart to stay in the FRG forever, leaves for Munich for the congress. But his meeting with Bram in Munich and the reality surrounding them dispelled his illusions, and they both return to their homeland.

Open details →

Andreas works as an assistant in his father’s small-town bakery. However, he actually has other plans: As a passionate trumpeter, he wants to study music in Berlin. His father is less than thrilled and wants his son to take over the bakery. Therefore, Andreas decides to try his luck in Berlin and starts working in a wholesale bakery together with his friend Paul. Incidentally, the in-house band is looking for a trumpeter.

Open details →

Three chemists unveil “Substance L,” a pesticide capable of eradicating all life without harming material assets. When Dr. Zichy, haunted by his work on Zyklon B, dies in a car crash and the lethal vial vanishes, colleague Dr. Cramm uncovers a child’s poisoning. To suppress the scandal, the corporation and justice system commit him to an asylum, until his assistant Barbara risks everything to expose the truth.

Open details →

An American military plane takes six people, who have taken part in a NATO maneuver, from Tripoli to Oslo. Among them are the British Captain Loy and the United States Air Force Corporal Doris Graves. During the flight, the two become closer, and they regret that the trip will end that evening. But everything turns out differently. The flight captain has received orders to pick up an agent at a German NATO airport, who is to be dropped off again on a Soviet island …

Open details →

After years of drifting around, Willi Palko arrives in the lignite mining area. He was not only looking for a new job, but also wanted to finally settle down here. The party leadership sends him to the Schepp brigade, which has made itself "suspicious" (on paper) due to its extremely high production figures. The stranger is accused of being a spy for the factory management. Willi finds it difficult to assert himself, but he is taken with the big excavator, the prospect of one day being allowed to drive it, and the brash flapper Hanna. He stays, and with his help a mine foreman is exposed as a Western agent and coal production is brought up to a really high level.

Open details →

Co-pilot Horst Schubert is a braggart and a true Don Juan. Thus, he tells young Ilse that he is in fact an "aircraft commander". This assertion brings about an embarrassing situation, for he suddenly meets her onboard his new work place, an IL-14 charter plane where Ilse acts as a stewardess. It gets worse, however: During a stop in Varna the police appear because Horst’s former lover Madelon has vanished. At home, meanwhile, his landlady has her hands full with her lodger’s current and former playmates. Ilse decides to put an end to this mixup and since the dull captain of the plane, Richard, makes no move to confront his co-pilot about his unstable private life, the smart stewardess appeals to the rest of the crew to help her teach Horst a few lessons in love.

Open details →

Two boys are helping the border guards to find a mysterious moor hound used by spies to transfer messages across the border.

Open details →

The black cooperative Cornwall boar achieves single-handedly, so to speak, what the LPG functionaries in Bolbitz fail to do. He takes away the individual farmers' fear of the LPG by secretly covering their sows at night. The black piglets frighten the farmers at first, because black litters mean bad luck and presuppose a sin. Collectivization is seen as a sin by the superstitious, especially Grandma Kahlow. But when even the priest's sow is not spared and they find out who the "culprit" is, the superstition dissolves into laughter and the fear of the LPG is banished.

Open details →