Susanne (17) and Robert (18) want to get married, butbecause Susanne is still under-aged, she needs parental permission. With twin babies and tight finances, the newlyweds soon feel overwhelmed, and dealing with everything makes them forget the love that originally brought them together. In this sequel to his box-office hit Seven Freckles (1978), director Zschoche skillfully captures the life and problems of young East Germans in the late 1980s.

When he is 14, Stefan’s parents decide to move the family to Marzahn, a desolate high-rise suburb of Berlin that isstill under construction. Stefan’s innocent childhood suddenly ends when he encounters the bullying of an older boy and his gang. Officials accused director Herrmann Zschoche and scriptwriter Ulrich Plenzdorf of giving a distorted, negative view of socialist reality. They required that the team make several edits and change the final...

The only documentary on the Auschwitz Trial held in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany, from 1963 to 1965. Based on 430 hours of original audiotapes, this production is an unparellel document of the first Auschwitz Trial. In one of the most significant trials in German legal history, 360 witnesses from 19 countries, including 211 Auschwitz survivors, confronted former members of Hitler's SS. The documentary also includes interviews with prosecutor Fritz...

This Weimar era film classic uses an avant-garde, fragmented narrative to tell the story of a working-class family in Berlin in 1931. Survival is difficult, with massive unemployment in the wake of the Great Depression. After Anni's brother commits suicide in despair, her family finds itself forced to move to Kuhle Wampe, a lakeside camp on the outskirts of Berlin, now home to increasing numbers of unemployed. When Anni's relationship with Franz ends,...

The DEFA Essentials Collection is a collection of films from DEFA Film Library.

East German painter, filmmaker, author and media artist Lutz Dammbeck debuted as an animation filmmaker with Der Mond (The Moon) in 1975. Dammbeck’s film projects made him an exception in GDR film and arts circles. By 1986, when he left the GDR for West Germany, he had directed a total of six shorts for the DEFA Studio for Animation Film.

Berlin in the 1960s. Olaf (Dieter Mann) and Horst (Kaspar Eichel) are two young metalworkers, who provoke their older colleagues with critiques of the antiquated equipment and lack of materials ... not to mention their love of leather jackets and motorbikes. Olaf and Horst begin to be targeted in the house newsletter, and the generational conflict escalates.. This film is the fourth in the Berlin Film Series by the Klein/Kohlhaase team. In 1966, officials...

A young doctor who specializes in family planning speaks with five East German women working at the Treffmodelle textile plant in Berlin. Of all different ages, positions and social backgrounds, they discuss birth control, children’s education and women's emancipation. Their open discussion about contraception caused a sensation when the film was released.

Over the course of a year, starting in March 1989, director Kurt Tetzlaff follows Alexander Schulz, an 18-year-old high-school student and son of a pastor. Alexander openly discusses his non-conformist political views. Full of hope, he joins the citizens’ movement in fall 1989; but after the first free elections held in the GDR on March 18, 1990, he realizes that his hopes are in vein.

Director Uwe Belz focuses his attention on viewing Karl Marx from an alternative perspective, showing the emotional and romantic sides of the historical figure. Passages from LOVE LETTERS that Marx and his fiancée, Jenny von Westphalen, exchanged as teenagers blend with paintings and beautifully atmospheric photographs of places connected to Marx. The letters and poems are read by well-known East German actors, such as Jenny Gröllmann and Dieter...