Kleine Freiheit is a 2003 film about the friendship (and later relationship) between two teenage boys who are illegal immigrants in Germany. The movie was critically well-received, particularly because of its accurate depiction of the Turkish–Kurdish conflict and the acting prowess of the nonprofessional actors. Cagdas Bozkurt won an acting prize at the Ankara film festival, while the movie won a viewers’ choice award in Istanbul. Kleine Freiheit, the German title of the movie, is a wordplay on Große Freiheit (Great Freedom), the rather famous name of a street in the red light St. Pauli district, in Hamburg, where the plot is set.

Kurz & Gut Macht Schule II: Animation is a useful and creative resource for instructors and learners of German. The DVD is a compilation of eleven animated short films ranging from four to fifteen minutes in length, which is a perfect amount of time for use in a classroom setting for learners of German as a foreign language.

A handsome boy on the brink of adulthood finds his quest to become a man leading him down a dangerous path in director Maria Solrun’s dark coming-of-age tale. Jargo (Constantin von Jascheroff) has everything a young man could want; a lavish home in Saudi Arabia and more money than he knows what to do with. When his father (Udo Kier) suddenly and unexpectedly commits suicide, however, Jargo is forced to relocate to a Berlin housing project, where he strikes up a friendship with young Kamil (Oktay Özdemir), a low-rent Turkish criminal …

Only two Jews who were born in the town of Czernowitz still survive, after the turmoils of the twentieth century, and they are now both in their nineties.

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.

Die uneheliche Tochter des liberianischen Generalkonsuls Momulu Massaquoi und des deutschen Zimmermädchens Elli Jansen erlebte schon früh Hänseleien und Ausgrenzung auf Grund ihrer Hautfarbe als auch auf Grund ihrer unehelichen Geburt. Die in einem Hamburger Arbeiterviertel aufgewachsene Jansen durchlebte in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus die Probleme eines offensichtlich „nichtarischen“ Menschen.

Annita 'Laila' Malavasi was an Italian partisan during the Second World War and one of the few female commanders in the resistance. She spent over a year in the Apennines, fighting against the German occupation. At the same time, she had to assert herself in the male-dominated Italian society. This film is a portrait of Laila and two of her comrades, Gina 'Sonia' Moncigoli and Pierina 'Iva' Bonilauri. It chronicles their experiences as they discuss the Resistenza and what it meant to them and many other women. This is a story of emancipation before and after Italy's liberation from fascism.

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.

The death of a schoolteacher leads to a reunion between a handful of close friends in this drama from writer and director Barbara Albert. Five longtime friends return to the town where they grew up for the first time since they were teenagers in order to pay their respects to a teacher who had a major impact on their lives. However, fate has taken the five women in very different directions since they left school.

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.

Noted German filmmaker Doris Dörrie directs this understated comedy about two middle-aged brothers who go to study at a Zen monastery in Japan. The two brothers could not be more different. Uwe (Uwe Ochsenknecht) is a bored husband and kitchenware salesman, while Gustav (Gustav Peter Wohler) is a flighty feng shui consultant and Eastern religions devotee. Just as Gustav is preparing to leave for the land of the rising sun, Uwe, whose wife just dumped him, begs his brother to let him tag along.

Brunhilde Pomsel describes herself as an “apolitical girl” and a “figure on the margins,” but she got closer to one of the worst criminals in world history than anyone else left alive. Today aged 104, Pomsel served as Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels’ stenographer. Brunhilde Pomsel’s life mirrors all the major breaks and continuities of the 20th century.

Arthur Lederman is 100 years old. Before World War II, he was a renowned concert violinist in his native Poland. In 1938, he escaped via steamship to New York City and was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. Christoph Erbsloeh is a 20-year-old German cellist whose grandfather served in Hitler’s army. But when a Jewish aid agency sends the young exchange student to help the elderly recluse, Arthur and Christoph both begin to confront the legacy of Nazi Germany in ways neither had ever imagined.

By pure coincidence, a photograph found on the internet by chance of a renowned American opera singer, Caterina Fabiani, throws the lives of Paul Kromberger and his daughter Sophie into complete chaos. Paul, well advanced in his years, appears to recognize the image as that of his deceased wife Evelyn, Sophie's mother. Unable to convince her controlling-and-stubborn-to-a-fault father otherwise, Sophie sets off for New York to seek out this mysterious stranger.

While recovering from a mental breakdown, the young Rita Seidel recalls the last two years, in which she fell in love with Manfred, a chemist who is ten years older. As Manfred became disillusioned with his opportunities in East Germany, he moved to the West. Rita followed him there and tried to persuade him to return but soon realized he would never do it.

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.

The screenplay is a fictionalized account of the true lives of Christiane and Gudrun Ensslin. Gudrun, a member of The Red Army Faction, was found dead in her prison cell in Stammheim in 1977. In the film, Von Trotta depicts the two sisters Juliane (Christine) and Marianne (Gudrun) through their friendship and journey to understanding each other. Marianne and Juliane was von Trotta’s third film and solidified her position as a director of the New German Cinema.

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.

We know that we can do something. Sun, wind, hydro and geothermal energy are natural sources accessible to everyone all over the world without making any difference. And they are renewable, free and available in the long run. Only the widespread knowledge about the possibilities of renewable energy can ignite an international movement and take the absolutely necessary energy transition. We need a quickly enlightening medium that conveys this knowledge comprehensibly and compactly.