Known for Acting
Eleven-year-old Jella lives with her mother in a rural idyll in which both feel at home and comfortable. Then, however, they move to the city where her father works. On parting, her friend Freitag presents Jella with a pair of pigeons. Although Jella is looking forward to life in the city, she is unable to accustom herself to her new surroundings. She is being picked on by the other children, and a neighbor′s son even releases her pigeons. They fly back to Freitag who returns them to Jella. When Jella visits the village one day, she is disappointed to learn that she has become a stranger there, as well.
Ten years old Ernst and his father Alfons are traveling to the family event on their bikes.
1780: When farmer Schmitzdorff in Wust, Brandenburg, is denied permission to marry his stepdaughter Sophie, he goes to Potsdam to obtain permission from the king himself. Because when he believes he is in the right, the proud man stubbornly insists on his opinion. But his stubbornness gets the better of him when he meets the dashing Wordelmann, Frederick II's personal grenadier, in an inn on the way. The latter sees the farmer as a welcome distraction from his otherwise dreary everyday life. Wordelmann tricks Schmitzdorff at his expense and pretends to be allowed to perform the wedding because of his military affiliation. And so the grenadier ends up organizing a wedding that isn't a wedding and takes the dastardly prank to the extreme until everyone involved has lost their laughter.
The wrenching story of a woman sentenced in 1934 to ten years in prison for antifascist activities. The love between her and her fiancée enables her to survive the tribulations of her time in prison, where she is one of few political prisoners.
1949. Grafenberg in Brandenburg shortly before the foundation of the GDR. Here lives Michel Hollmann and works in roadmaking. His purpose in life are his wife Lotte and the two children Gerda and Heinz, for whom he is reconstructing a summerhouse into a “nest”. In Grafenberg, his siblings are living as well: His brother Karl, the mayor, and sister-in-law Edith, who works in a textile factory, with their son Jürgen. Edeltraut, his sister, has married the lamp fabricant Berthold Bennert and leads a well-off life. They as well have a son: Harald. Part of the family are further sister Hanna and brother-in-law Hermann, who is a fisherman on one of the local lakes and conducts a tenacious private war against old Stegewald and his presumptive prince-electoral rights. They are living their lives with their large and small conflicts, with different intentions, and yet remain connected always.
The 18-year-old construction worker Schultzendorf, known as Schulle, sets off for Berlin from his home town of Ankershagen. He is taken with the Marzahn construction site. He dreams of making archaeological finds there. He searches every excavator load for treasures, which not only earns him ridicule, but also the anger of his colleagues because he delays the work. They try to change his mind and get him a wife. This fails, but Schulle finds one himself - the slightly older Helga, who needs his help to get away from her divorced husband. Once she has succeeded in doing so, she breaks away from Schulle, whose youthful impetuosity unsettles her.
In an enchanted forest, the princely brothers Michael and Andreas get lost and are transformed, by a mountain spirit who jealously guards his underground treasure, into animals until the unlikely event of sincere love from a human. The only persons who may be able to give such love are the local commoner sisters Snow-white and Rose-red, who are kind and helpful by nature and stand to harvest unimagined rewards.
A master thief returns home. There he is threatened with the gallows if he fails to solve the tasks set by the count. So he has to steal the count's personal horse, the bed sheet and the wedding ring as well as the priest and the sexton.
The young shepherd Konrad wants to ask the princess to marry him. All the exhortations of the kitchen maid Anne are to no avail. With the help of a magic flute, Konrad solves all the tasks set by the king and the princess. In doing so, he recognizes the princess's true character and so he decides in favour of Anne, not without first severely punishing the greed of the royal court.
A new member joins Trumpolt's road construction brigade - Wenzel Heiseke, who has a reputation for being a loudmouth. But he has actually been dismissed because of his critical words. Trumpolt believes he can turn him around with his tried-and-tested hair-pulling method, as there are no problems in his decorated brigade. But unexpectedly for him and his colleagues, the newcomer remains stubborn and silent, refusing to be provoked by anything. His strange behavior divides the brigade. Conflicts in the teamwork that had previously been forcibly covered up erupt. Wenzel's silence is instructive for the brigade; they no longer want to do without him, who has found his way back to some truthful words. However, his behavior with the pretty Martina from the construction office almost leads to shipwreck ..
Large-scale, five-part film about the relationship between two men caught between friendship, rivalry and hatred during the first decades of GDR in the countryside.
