On Aug. 9, 1989, as a black man was stopped on a bridge in Stuttgart for questioning, he knifed two officers to death and wounded three others before being shot dead himself. This man's name was Frederic Otomo. At about 6:15 that morning, he had been confronted on a subway train by a ticket inspector, who told him he had to get off at the next stop. The inspector got aggressive with Otomo, who head-butted him and fled from the train, setting up the manhunt that ended on the bridge.

Those facts are known. What happened between the two incidents is unknown, and inspires this film by Frieder Schlaich, who tries to imagine what went through Otomo's mind between the two confrontations. Along the way, Schlaich portrays a society in which some are racists who act cruelly toward the black man, and others, even strangers, go out of their way to help him.

The melodrama, film begins with a young Afro-German girl being left at the doorsteps of the Rose family—white middle-class Germans—assembled for a birthday party. Initially, most family members treat the young girl with relatively welcome arms as they believe she is only giving a performance as a birthday surprise from an aunt. The family later discovers a suitcase that was left on the doorsteps and realize that the young girl, Toxi, has in fact been abandoned. Once the family learns that Toxi has been abandoned there is a shift in feelings regarding their acceptance of her; the possibility of the girl spending more time at the home than was expected forces members of the family to confront their racism.

A well-off Munich family offers boarding to a refugee. Diallo from Nigeria soon makes friends among the family members, but they are tested when they have to face racism, bureaucracy and terror suspicions because of him.

A moving documentary about the life and untimely death of Ghanaian-German poet, academic and political personality May Ayim. Ayim was one of the founders of the Black German Movement, and her research on the history of Afro-Germans, but also her political poetry, made her known in Germany and other countries.

Ayim wrote in the tradition of oral poetry and felt a strong connection to other black poets of the diaspora. Poetry gave her an opportunity to confront the white German society with its own prejudices. Interviews and poems reveal the search for identity, how and why the term Afro-German was introduced. An insightful look at how a young black woman experiences the German reunification.

A young black man is verbally harassed by an older woman on a streetcar, while the other passengers remain silent. He finally exacts his revenge. Pepe Danquart's Oscar-winning Schwarzfahrer is a look not only at racism, but at its subtlety. The old woman who rants against immigrants is odious enough, but more important is that no one challenges her.

When the pilot Marion meets the Kurdish male prostitute Baran in Turkey, a chemistry develops between the two. Because Baran wants to escape his miserable circumstances, he persuades Marion to take him to Germany with him. Marion, who is in the midst of a life and meaning crisis and has to digest a cancer diagnosis, makes a future in Europe possible for him through a sham marriage. However, the “deal” that the two make does not last long.

Evet, ich will is a refreshing Turkish–German comedy about four cross-cultural couples in Berlin. All are challenged to grapple with political, cultural, and religious differences in the name of love.

This savvy and sexy film opens with its heroine, Nabou, a black lesbian living in Germany, being unceremoniously dumped by her lover Katja, a self-centered, blue-haired, white punker. Nabou takes a job cleaning Kim’s apartment, the straight black woman who lives in the same building just below Katja, ostensibly to stay as close as possible to her ex. Meanwhile Kim, with her own melodrama to deal with, feels overworked and underappreciated by her boyfriend, who is also her boss at the ad agency for which she works. While at first cool to and seemingly uninterested in each other, Nabou and Kim’s relationship blossoms over time, even as Katja decides she wants Nabou back and Kim’s boyfriend pops the big marriage question. With its hip soundtrack, overlapping story lines, and satirical take on racism, Everything Will Be Fine is a modern lesbian comedy sure to surprise and please.

A high school teacher’s experiment to demonstrate to his students what life is like under a dictatorship spins horribly out of control when he forms a social unit with a life of its own.

Brown Babies: The Mischlingskinder Story tells the personal and painful stories of Afro-American-German Brown Babies in a world where biracial, bicultural children were unwanted, ignored and forgotten. Abandoned by enemy nations and their families. Brown Babies: The Mishlingskinder Story shows how these children overcame extraordinary obstacles and honors the African-American woman who fought to save their lives when no one else would. Many archival images appear courtesy of the AFRO American Newspapers Archives.

This was recorded in the early 1990’s as an expose on Blacks in Europe. Ika Hügel-Marshall appears in this segment on Afro-Germans. This is a copy made from a VHS tape.