Advanced search

Young student Lene is standing at the train station; she must decide whether to take the train back to Berlin where she lives or the one to the Bavarian countryside where her family resides--the place she left in anger many years ago. 'Hierankl' is the name of a Bavarian "Bergbauernhof", i.e., a solitary farm in the mountains with nothing else around but Alps, cows, and nature. Lene returns home to her beloved father Lukas, her rejecting mother Rosemarie, her brother Paul, and a dark, sinister farmhand. She walks through the places of her childhood and feels better. Things get better yet when Götz, a long-missed friend of her father's, arrives to celebrate Lukas' 60th birthday. Despite their significant age difference, Lene and Götz are attracted to each other, and they have a good time. But the day of celebration that should have been, turns into family day of reckoning, and more than one well-kept family secret is revealed.

Maria is a student at the university of Essen, Germany, living and working in a gray, unpleasant, and anonymous environment. While she has little problem finding someone for a one night stand, she rebuffs her lovers in such a rude way that they actually don't know what's going on. But what seems to be a negative attitude at first glance is in fact much worse: Maria is suffering from borderline syndrome, a serious psychotic disease that makes her fail to develop a continuous, reliable personality, from her own perspective as well as from the perspective of those she meets. Then one day, she bumps into Jan, a student who falls in love with her without delay. He's awaiting a hard time when he has to learn how hard it is to stay loyal and faithful to a person who, in her own words, "has a different world inside of her head" and who feels that "there is something inside of me that eats me up."

People are trapped in the basement of a New York apartment building on the hottest day of the summer.

Katrin and Jürgen spend their holidays in Corsica. Katrin is in her mid-thirties, working as a tracer at Jürgen's company who suddenly remembers he's married -- but not with Kathrin. So they decide to end their vacation earlier than they had planned. Virtually a second before they start to drive back to the airport, Katrin takes her belongings out of Jürgens car again and lets him go. Now being alone for the remaining days of her vacation, Katrin finds herself more and more bewildered by the things that happened to her. She tries to calm herself down a bit by strolling around, visiting clubs and bars and discotheques, having a gentle one night stand with two men passing by, things like that... Then she meets Malte, a 17 year old criminal from Berlin, who is serving time in a reform camp. Malte falls in love with that friendly but sad and disappointed woman. It takes some time for Katrin to realize what's going on, then she feels more and more sympathy for that little bandit who, in a way, is a bit like her. Torn between Katrin and the camp, Malte causes more and more trouble, and in the end Katrin tries to help him escape from the island. But things end up differently.

Wander is working as an engine operator on a cargo-ship. When he takes a coffee-break, a woman appears in a talkshow on TV. In an instant, Wander recognizes her to be his long lost girl-friend Zelda from childhood days some 20 years ago. In these days, Wander used to live in a boarding-school. From his room window, he can see the house on the opposite river bank where Zelda lives. She's a really adorable young beauty, but she's less affected than one should think, and so Wander gets his chance. They are having a good time until one day when Wander finds Zelda's father in the school kitchen making love to the kitchen maid. Things turn out bad for most of the characters involved, but there's an open end.

Anna is the Jewish daughter of a Spanish mother and a Greek father. She has returned to her family's house in Greece after many of her friends and family members have died over the years. Although she came back to the house in order to sell it, things begin to take a different direction: The house itself, the furniture and other equipment in it seem to become alive for Anna, recalling images of her past, her beloved parents and her friend Max, who once gave her shelter from the raging policemen when she took part as a photo journalist in a political demonstration in Berlin. Anna changes her mind: When some rich, ignorant American couple wondering about if they should buy the house asks for the swimming pool (while the Mediterranean is half a mile away), she simply doubles the charge, and finally puts the "For sale" plate into the garbage can. In the meantime, she has had a little love affair with a young man from the village, found a girlfriend from her childhood days, swum in the sea, and found a way to live in peace with her melancholic memories.

Mr. Kamp is an unobtrusive man in his sixties, living in Cologne, Germany in a huge anonymous apartment building. Now retired, he spent his life as a civil servant, and he still behaves like that. But then everything changes when he happens to meet Claudia, a young, hippie-like student. Claudia is full of sympathy for the old man, and with her direct, uncomplicated, and spontaneous style she finally succeeds to overcome Kamp's attitude of polite reservation towards her. This unequal couple faces a lot of weird and comic situations, which, however, always reflect the incomprehension of their social environment when people realize that these two are buddies, not grandpa and granddaughter. But it all ends up in a melancholic mood because Claudia is born under a dark star and finally gets a victim of her sad fate...

Bernd Willenbrock is a car dealer at Magdeburg, East Germany, a small but successful and well-reputed businessman who has made his way in the post-Communist society. A sympathetic wife, a nice house, a fast car, a house in the country--these are the attributes of material success that count for Willenbrock. Then, things slowly begin to move into a different direction: Although he loves his wife, Willenbrock is attracted to a young student who keeps him at distance. To do her a favor, he gives her father a night-watchman job. But one night, the watchman gets cruelly beaten by burglars. And a bit later, the burglars come to Willenbrock's house at night. This is where the illusion of a quiet, secure, and self-satisfied life reaches an end. Things start to go wrong, well-known procedures don't work anymore, hopes and expectations of all kinds turn into disappointments. Willenbrock is challenged by an increasing feeling of lost safety and control, and he must find a way to cope with that.

16 years old Julia calls herself Kroko and plays the role of a tough and ruthless girly gang leader in Berlin-Wedding, home of the losers within the German capital. She dominates her surrounding with her hyper- coolness and her attractiveness. Her life is made up of hanging around with her gang, visiting the local clubs and discotheques, occasional robberies, and a big deal of boredom. At home, she terrorizes her mother with ignorance, who desperately tries to get through her live of alcoholism and the obligations of a mother of 2 children - Kroko and her little sister Cora. One night, she and her gang capture a car, drive through the town -- but then she runs over a man who suddenly crosses the street. She is caught and the judge sentences her to 60 hours work in a social service where disabled persons are cared for. Instead of showing some repentance of what she's done, Kroko is indignant of having to get in touch with cripples and spastics. During the first phase of her punishment, she is aggressive, insulting the disabled, refusing to do any kind of work at the station. But after a while things slightly begin to change. Kroko experiences that her gang won't be of any help for her to cope with the problems she has, and even her boy-friend finally gets fed up with her ugly mixture of arrogance and helplessness, coolness and immaturity. Finding herself pretty much alone, she carefully opens herself for the people at the social service station.

The four friends Bibiana, Claudio, Harald, and Tamara separated in 1992, but promised themselves to meet each other again on the 30th birthday of each of them, which takes place throughout the year 2000. So the film is basically divided into four sequences related to the four birthday parties, plus additional material cut between these four parts. While the plot proceeds, in principal, according to the timely order of the birthdays, the last birthday (Bibiana's) is presented as the first one, and that's where the "additional material" comes from: This birthday is the most complex one, because Bibiana has, as a young girl, decided for herself "never to get older than 30 years", and she has never ceased from this decision. At the same time, Tamara is far advanced in pregnancy, and so "birthday" is getting a new sense around this particular date. Though being pure fiction, the film follows a semi-documentary attitude by not only telling a story of four friends but also showing all of the protagonists in short interview-like situations cut between the story, where each of them takes the opportunity to explain his or her personal point of view of this long-lasting friendship, unbiased by the presence of the other friends. The film shows how real friendship can unite very different, and complicated, characters, who live four individual lives, but would never hesitate to stand up for their friend.

Phöbe Panizzi, an attractive woman in her late twenties, has more or less learned to manage her life as an illiterate right in the middle of a large city in Germany. She has arranged herself with the price she has to pay for her secret: leading her life as a loner, eagerly trying to avoid any kind of near contact to the persons around her, getting fed up with jobs for losers far below of her real potential, not even having a chance to get a driving license. And lies, lies, lies, the whole day through, just to protect her secret. One day she meets Jul, a boy about ten years younger than herself, who carries his own bag of problems around with him. Jul likes her, attracted by Phöbe's strength and her cool attitude, and he soon realizes that they have something in common - their problem of fitting themselves into the framework of social expectations. While Jul openly shows himself as a sensitive character looking for someone he could talk to, Phöbe rudely blocks his gentle advances, just the way she is used to do. Soon trouble starts. Phöbe meets Jul's young father, they like each other, Jul catches them while they are together at Phöbe's home, and Jul cracks up. Things escalate when Jul's father leaves a note for Phöbe about what she should do, but Phöbe fails deciphering the lines and calls for the police - exactly what she was told not to do. It takes some time before there is a silver lining on the horizon.