Construction of the Elbe Philharmonic is underway, with its opening planned for autumn, 2011. Hamburg?s creative artists are not alone in seeing a new landmark for their city in this spectacular concert hall....
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Emotional chaos in the elderly and the best aesthetic for folds and wrinkles. Birgit Glombitza talks to Andreas Dresen about geriatric love and sex, and his new film "Wolke 9".
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Billed as the inspirational story of one of the greatest legends of all times, "The Red Baron" is flying, driving and healing Germany at dizzy cinematic heights. There are just not enough superlatives to do this film justice. By Ekkehard Knörer.
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German-Turkish director Fatih Akin's "The Edge of Heaven" won the best screen play award at Cannes. Now showing in German cinemas, it is a light, bright film about death, an optimistic requiem full of little utopias. By Katja Nicodemus
Director Romuald Karmakar has made a film which reveals the Islamist mindset. Based on the lessons delivered by Imam Mohammed Fazazi, whose mosque in Hamburg was visited by the 9/11 pilots, it stretches for over two hours and provides almost nothing for the eye. Precisely this, says Eckhard Fuhr, makes it so effective.
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"Strike" – Volker Schlöndorff's most recent film, on the heroes of Poland's Solidarity movement, is a Gdansk symphony. And Fritz Göttler speculates that it could only have been made by a German.
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Maren Kroymann made a name for herself doing stand-up. Now she shines in Angelina Maccarone's film "Verfolgt" (pursued) as the older lover in an S&M relationship. The plot description is enough to make most people wince but the film is an exercise in restraint. It also won the Golden Leopard in Locarno in 2006. By Liane von Billerbeck
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Martin Scorsese's "The Departed" is the story of two cops as mirror-image doppelgangers. But it is a doppelganger itself, a remake of the Hong Kong film "Infernal Affairs." While the original is a masterwork of playfulness, the remake confounds police genre and psycho junk. By Ekkehard Knörer
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Pop culture has long made a joke of the Führer, while German mainstream culture has been a little more reserved. With "Mein Führer," Dani Levy presents a Hitler to laugh and cry at. According to Harald Martenstein, this only sort of works.
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Many young German directors are filming with an eye toward authentic stories. Reality is their key. And talking is kept to a minimum. Matthias Luthardt's film "Pingpong" is a paradigm of this Nouvelle Vague Allemande. By Hanns-Georg Rodek
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Katja Nicodemus raves about Claude Chabrol's new film with his favorite actress, Isabelle Huppert. As an investigative judge in "Comedy of Power," Huppert is a modern femme fatale, mowing down corruption and male condescension with weapons of wit and writ.
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In his film debut, Benjamin Heisenberg develops a credible drama in which the fear of terrorism is part of a broader sense of social disorientation. "Sleeper" tells a story of personal betrayal in a world that is as rational as it is paranoid. By Sven von Reden
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Former GDR dissident and poet Wolf Biermann is pleasantly disappointed that a young aristocratic Wessi like Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck can breathe such convincing life into the Stasi phantoms of his past. The film "The Life of Others" might just be the start of Germany's properly in-depth confrontation with its second dictatorship. Winner of the 2007 Oscar for Best Foreign Film
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Detlev Buck's latest film "Tough Enough" is set in Berlin's notoriously hard-edged Neukölln district. In an interview with Daniela Sannwald, the director talks about urban ghettos, language barriers and the mafia.
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Since it hit the German screens in February, Serdar Akar's Turkish secret agent film "Valley of the Wolves" has been widely touted as an anti-Western hate film. But for all the talk of a "clash of civilisations", isn't it much like any Western thriller - with the roles reversed? By Alexandra Stäheli.
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Steven Spielberg's film "Munich" deals with the 1972 Olympic hostage taking and its bloody aftermath. The film is a provocative blend of cliches and originality, wisdom and presumptuousness, as inextricably tangled as the Middle East itself. By Tobias Kniebe
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