Kanopy (Firm)

Gregor is a young soldier entering Germany with the victorious Soviet troops at the end of WWII. But he is also the child of left-wing Germans who fled from Hitler and spent the war in the Soviet Union. As a result, his return to Germany is ambivalent; he finds he is a stranger in his own land. Film critics rank Konrad Wolf's most autobiographical film among the 100 Most Significant German Films of all time. As they enter Germany, Gregor begins to...

Olga and Paul. Both are looking for work, a new beginning, an existence, life: Olga, who comes from the Eastern part of Europe, where unremitting poverty is the order of the day. Paul, who comes from the Western part, where unemployment means not hunger, but a crisis of meaning and sense of uselessness. Both are struggling to believe in themselves, to find a meaning in life. In both the West and East. Both travel to a new country, and thus into its...

An Oscar nominee for Best Documentary and winner of the 1986 New York Film Critic's Circle non-fiction film prize, Marlene is a "portrait of a remarkably strong-willed woman, stage-managing her career right up to the bitter end" (New York Times) that brilliantly lifts the veil on a movie star of the brightest magnitude as she is fading into twilight.

This lavish, impudent, adult fairy tale takes the viewer from 18th-century Braunschweig to St. Petersburg, Constantinople, Venice, and then to the moon using ingenious special effects, stunning location shooting, and a rich color palette, supervised by cameraman Konstantin Irmen-Tschet, who had worked for Fritz Lang in earlier Ufa films.

Shortly before GDR’s collapse, Helke Misselwitz traveled by train from one end of the country to the other interviewing East German women of different ages and backgrounds. In this documentary masterpiece, women reveal their personal and professional frustrations, hopes and aspirations—and, in doing so, paint a portrait of a changing society. The landscape and architecture of East Germany, filmed in B&W on 35mm by Thomas Plenert, form the background...

This two-part epic traces the development of a manor and farm in Mecklenburg, from the flight of its aristocratic landowners before the advancing Soviet troops in 1945, to just after the East German uprising of June 17, 1953, by which time it has become an agricultural cooperative. Powerful stories and images take place in a context of historical events. 2-DVD set. The story revolves around a peasant girl who is to go study to become an agronomist...

The engineer Linda falls in love with not with one, but two of the men on her construction team, in a film that raises questions about the importance of work, love and happiness in socialist East Germany of the 1970s. When Iris Gusner, one of very few East German female directors, previewed the rough-cut of her debut film, she was accused of presenting an "unrealistic picture of life," and officials banned the film. It did not become widely available...

Ruza left Belgrade more than 25 years ago to seek a new life in Zurich. Now in her fifties, she has completely detached herself from the past. She owns a cafeteria and maintains an orderly, joyless existence. Mila, a waitress there, is a good-humored Croatian woman who also emigrated decades ago, but, unlike Ruza, she dreams of returning to a house on the Croatian coast. Both of them receive a jolt when Ana, a young, itinerant woman who has fled Sarajevo,...

In order to escape her narrow and restrictive life, Senta, the daughter of a rich ship owner, seeks refuge in her fantasies and dreams. In this realm of imagination, a bold and restless sea captain appears to her, the Flying Dutchman, who is cursed to wander the seas forever. In her obsessive dreams, Senta frees this man through her love for him. Herz's successful staging of The Flying Dutchman at the Berlin Komische Oper in 1962 at the invitation...

German police dog Rex investigates crime and solves mysteries on the streets of Vienna - protecting the innocent, catching criminals and stealing the occasional ham roll.