Leontes, King of Sicily, wrongfully accuses his wife Hermione of committing adultery with his brother Polyxenes. He throws his unhappy queen into jail and abandons the child she has in prison to the wilds.

Brigitte Mira plays the leading role in these four episodes and also links them together as she strolls through the city with her dog, past family homes, tenement blocks and apartment complexes. There is a story hidden behind every door.

With the assistance of protagonist Ingolf Lück and several other well-known actors in guest roles a number of young authors demonstrate their talents at sketch-writing and the enjoyment they take in performing these pieces.

Karl Heinz Lotz, a DEFA director, tells the story of how an East Berlin family managed to follow this very route to Hungary, then Austria, and finally back to West Berlin - to arrive on that historic day when the wall came down.

A mysterious child, a young married couple with a host of problems, and a sect which lays claim to not only their sect members’ money but also to their souls.

The stories are set in an exclusive apartment complex. The janitor also lives in this extensive facility being responsible for the safety of the upmarket residents.

His curiosity aroused by the joy so clearly visible in those television images from November 9th 1989, the day of German reunification, Marcel Ophüls resolved to return to the site of these historic events one year later and talk to the people

We guarantee that nobody will doze off during our show! An international repertoire of musical hits, from West Side Story to Showboat with Sweet Charity looking for the Phantom of the Opera - and all of that at the Cage aux Folles, of course.

The human lifespan is no longer limited to 70 or 80 years. Genetic research in the last hundred years has increased life expectancy from 40 to 80.

Berlin has a vast network of lakes, rivers and canals, integrated into the urban landscape. In fact, it is often said that Berlin has more bridges than Venice.

In the 17th century a glockenspiel was installed in St Catherine’s church in Danzig, consisting of 32 bells.

Three Smith families check in at one hotel. An American and his wife: One glass of alcohol is enough to trigger nymphomaniac seizures in her. Her hubby is restlessly preoccupied preventing her from such predicaments.

Ruth Feldmann is planning to go away for a dirty weekend with her boyfriend, the police officer Andreas Bongart. She tells her husband Karl, a sergeant in the police, that she has to visit her sick sister for a few days.

Three guests in a luxury hotel: the well-respected managing director of a computer company, an actor known to be a ladies’ man, and a murderer wearing glasses who has calculated that a hotel room provides the perfect setting for the murder of his

Verdi had fallen in love with Shakespeare’s FALLSTAFF, the wise and amusing clown, the drunkard who can laugh at himself and is well aware that everything in this world is fun - though not always good fun. He had enchanted Verdi.

He is as much a part of Vienna as Lipizzaner stallions, Sachertorte and Hans Moser are. But now André Heller intends to leave the city of his forefathers. At the age of 42 he plans a decisive break with his past life.

In their isolated living room Julius and Olaf experience a sort of cultivated indifference as they strive to attain absolute lack of volition.

He is one of the most important international film directors and his successes are

Harry, a successful industrial manager in Cologne in his early 40th, meets Jessica, a young crane operator form East Berlin, while on a business trip in the GDR.

Professor Lichtwitz is the owner of a booming architectural office. Privately, though, he is an established philanderer and it is for this reason that he had a penthouse built which is directly accessible from his office.

They play with Billions tells of the rise and fall of the young and ambitious Gerd Asselt in the 1980's in West Germany.

The pirates of the spree - that's the Kukowski kids when they board the freighter "Marianne 2" during the schoolbreaks and turn it into a playground of adventure.

Hippolytos, son of Theseus and Amazon queen Antiope, wants to leave Troezene to look for his father and, at the same time, flee from a dilemma: he has fallen in love with his father's prisoner, Arikia.

Lenglumé, a wealthy citizien, has arranged a night out with former classmates from his boarding school without his wife's knowledge. The following day, he wakes up in bed with a man.

Since his parents' divorce, 16-year-old Ralf is left to fend for himself. When the fall break comes, his mother goes in vacation with her present lover.

When Milly's ‘friend’ suffers a sudden slipped disc and can't even get out of the bathtub, and her husband appears unexpectedly because the plane he was to pilot has been grounded by bad weather, the resulting situation absolutely bristles with

Lyle Taney, a Boston professor, is being blackmailed by an agent, demanding of her to spy on a free-lance scientist and his assistant. Without her knowledge the two inject her with a serum which almost kills her.

She: a 50something and very successful in her profession as a fashion designer in Berlin. He: in his early 30s, good-looking without an income of his own, financially and socially dependent on her. An odd combination.

Andrezej Wajda's dramatization of Fjodor M. Dostojewski's novel focuses on the three main characters: The student, Raskolnikov, has slain an old moneylender. His motive has less to do with greed than with his ambition to perpetuate a perfect crime.

The pupils of Grade 6b are upset. They have, all the while been intending to compose a pop song under the guidance of music teacher, Willi Bolbrinker, in the hope of a premiere in the coming class party.

Head over heels, Hanna flees Hamburg for St. Peter-Ording on the North Sea, severing all ties with the past. She checks in at a lodge as Milly.

This film on Vienna on the eve of World War 1 purports to tell a parable alluding to the fate of present-day Europe.

The character of King Lear represents a very special challenge for Bernhard Minetti, the grand master of German theatre.

Sarah Erdmann has become engaged to Manfred Roth, who is a few years older than her, and is intent on getting married. But, the relationship seems ill-fated.

The film tells the story of the rise and fall of a German businessman who is fascinated by dreams of great success. In the end the decline of this climber is not to be halted.

The three Prosorov sisters and their brother grew up in Moscow but settled in a provincial town when their father, the general, who died a year ago, was transferred there.

Summer, 1984. 50,000 people gather in front of the Reichstag in Berlin, to marvel at the vast firework show entitled "The World and the Counter-World or Tumbling through Dreams" presented by André Heller, the total-artist from Vienna.

The film is not an expose on August Strindberg as a historical person.

Up to now quick-witted Vicky's life has been bound up with old things in plentiful supply as  she runs the pawnbroker shop in Berlin Kreuzberg.

"Congratulations to Peter Stein! He has managed to transfer his superb production of OTHELLO with the Welsh National Opera to the small screen without damaging it in any apparent fashion.

A documentary of director Peter Steín's theatrical work outside Germany shot during a performance of ORESTIE in Athens in 1986. As venue for the performance, a stone quarry was reconstructed and altered to seat 2000 people.

The revolutionary plays "1789" and "1793", the monumental film "Moliére", the dramatization of Klaus Mann's "Mephisto", the Shakespeare cycle - Ariane Mnouchkine's work always creates sensation, and the works

“Faithful to the Original - the Classics and the Directors” provides an overview of vital, living theatre in the form of extracts from classical pieces staged by well-known

Once again Botho Strauß rehearses a satyric drama in our society, governed as it is by the concept of the Last Judgement. He penetrates our technological present by using the myths of nature from the past.

Luc Bondy's production of THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE aims to take the Marivaux figures away from the audience, so that distance engenders clear-sightedness.

The film portrays the problems of people around the age of 40, who have already lived the larger part of their life, but on the other hand aren't willing or able to go on like this.

American David Shiner studied drama for three years before he discovered his talent for mime. In Paris, the international mime metropole, he was able to acquire the basic techniques.

The hand holding the non-filter cigarette shakes, but the close-up of the television camera, examining every wrinkle and the stubble on his chin in an open search for the thief, the poet, the myth of Genet which verges on voyeurism, reveals eyes

Elke Steube, an 18-year-old schoolgirl, reveals to her parents that she has entered a fictitious marriage with a Kurdish Turk.