In 1936 Nazi Germany, a young, innocent apprentice, full of Olympic fever, leaves his rural village to see the ceremonies in Berlin. Upon arriving in the capitol, he meets a widow and a relationship blossoms. They spend an idyllic summer at her lakeside home, but the forces of totalitarianism cannot be held at bay and soon invade their lives.

The Olympic Summer

When a German businessman heads to Russia with his wife and son Stefan on a business venture following the end of the cold war, he quickly finds that the way east and west do business differs greatly. In the mean time his son Stefan forms a friendship with his fathers local business partners son Tengis. Tengis is in no way an average teenager continually in a psychological illusion dreaming of butterflies and looking at life from an abstract point of view. Tengis falls into a deeper state of anxiety when in his view his new found German friend shifts his attention to a local girl. By the end of the film Stefan finds himself in greater confusion as he tries to come to terms with the loss of Tengis and the major changes that have taken place following his return to Russia shortly after leaving it.

The Caucasian Night

German director Gordian Maugg creates this curious documentary/reenactment of the life of Hans Warn, adventuring sailor-turned-photographer. Born in Bremen in 1899, the young Hans signs on to the good ship Herbert in 1914, but not before he persuades his mother to buy him a camera. What starts as a hobby soon develops into a passion. Soon Hans is documenting his life on the high seas and his ship's six-month capture during World War I. Later, Hans marries the girl next door, Wilma, but their family life is sporadic because of his seafaring career. Maugg uses a wide palette of cinematic tricks and devices to recall the early years of the century, including sepia tinting, decorative intertitles, distressed footage, and other idioms of early silent documentaries.

Hans Warns: My 20th Century

Jutta and Eric were once lovers and aspiring chefs in the Spree Forest region of East Germany. Too prone too brilliant but risky improvisation, Jutta fell into obscurity; Eric defected to the West and became famous. Now he has returned to enlist her aid of crucial cooking contest - does this portend rekindled romance or cynical exploitation?

Zutaten für Träume

In Gordian Maugg's historic crime story ZEPPELIN! the airship casts its long shadow over three generations of a southern German family: Why did Robert Silcher, crew member of the LZ 129 Hindenburg, die in the flames at Lakehurst on 7 May 1937? Unsuccessfully his son Jakob spent his life trying to shed light on the mysterious circumstances of the accident. His grandson Matthias remembers his father's deep sadness and a trip to Lake Constance in 1973. Matthias' investigation leads him to the Zeppelin Museum in Friedrichshafen to one of Robert's former colleagues, Karl Semmle. But the old man rejects Matthias and first wants to know why he is so curious before he breaks his silence. The bizarre circumstances of Robert's death and the lives of his surviving family members thereafter does not come to light until 2004 with the help of Karl Semmle, the only witness of the time who really knows what happened and what drove Robert to sacrifice his own life to save the airship industry - a decision that would go on to haunt the lives of three generations. Filmmaker Gordian Maugg interweaves beautiful archive footage of the Hindenburg in this film, allowing a rare sight on the big screen of this exceptional airship.