Known for Acting
ZERV" tells of the first years after the fall of the Wall, the breaks in life courses, of completely different biographies and of the successful coming together in the common fight against crime, which knows no East and West. ZERV stands for the Central Investigation Office for Government and Association Crime, founded in Berlin in 1991 by decision of the federal government.
After losing his job as a marketing officer, Walter, a workaholic in his forties, finds himself in an existential crisis and takes on the identity of another man.
A shootout, five fatalities and he himself wounded - in the otherwise quiet station of the village policeman Frank Koops, things are just like in the Wild West. The bloodbath was commissioned by the imprisoned mafia boss Petrovic, who wants to use all means to get rid of a key witness who was hidden in the tranquility of St. Andreasberg in the utmost secrecy.
The insurance salesman Vincent Baumann, a cold-blooded careerist and minion of a merciless system, becomes a victim of the very corporations he is representing. Degraded to a henchman he grimly struggles to get back on the job market. He fights to climb the social ladder. In the process he realizes that there are other values than income and success. He decides against his previous ideology and for another human being, for Lisa Sokulowa. They don’t have a future. But they celebrate a small triumph against the dominance of the ruling system.
Astrid is a comedian who makes people laugh for a living; her husband Markus is her manager and the two of them work well together. They have a nine-year-old daughter and are expecting their second child. When they learn that their child will not be born healthy, they are at first optimistic that they will be able to meet this challenge – although they have no idea what awaits them. But the closer it gets to the due date, the more Astrid begins to worry about the future of her unborn child as well as that of her family and her career. After many discussions and arguments Astrid realises that the decision that will affect all their lives must be made by her alone. What complicates matters further is the fact that, as a successful entertainer, she is in the eye of the public and the media.
In the final analysis, it all comes down to guilt, different shades of guilt that one assumes in a single moment of thoughtlessness or in months of premeditated planning. Defence Attorney Friedrich Kronberg knows he must tip legal scales of justice in favour of his client for crimes that are never black and white and what they may seem. In German with subtitles.
A lighthearted look at the opening of the border crossing of Bornholmer Straße in Berlin from the point of view of the confused border guards.
Nine young actors leave behind their daily lives in Berlin and travel to the country to audition for a summer theatre production to be performed in the ruins of an old church. A once-renowned Swiss director is using this week of rehearsals to find the lead for this production of “Hamlet”. The director is staying privately at the home of an old woman, but the actors are being put up at a run-down hotel with very thin walls.
Shows the interaction between Hamburg police officers and paramedics.
Tatort is a long-running German/Austrian/Swiss, crime television series set in various parts of these countries. The show is broadcast on the channels of ARD in Germany, ORF in Austria and SF1 in Switzerland.
