Defa Movies

Lavish adaptation of Wilhelm Hauff′s fairy tale: Young charburner Peter Munk dreams of joining the upper class. He makes a deal with the...

Mother Wolffen, a washerwoman, is a woman of principle: A poor man must do what he must to get through life, only he mustn't get caught doing it. All...

Based on the records of the Nuremberg trial of the chemical giant IG Farben; a story about the collaboration between international corporations and...

Film about the third 'Weltfestspiele der Jugend und Studenten für den Frieden' in East Berlin, 1951. West Germany is represented as a degenerate...

Diederich Heßling is scared of everything and everyone. But as he grows up, he comes to realize that he has to offer his services to the...

In the Werra valley near the border is one of the five soda factories of the GDR that once belonged to the powerful Solvay group. After the war, they...

The story of Johann Friedrich Böttger, an apothecary’s apprentice and alchemist’s assistant. Fleeing from the Prussian King, he goes...

Professor Sonnenbruck is a scientist who is not particularly interested in politics. Even the meeting in 1943 with his former assistant Peters does...

In the middle of the 19th century, almost one in three women who gave birth died of puerperal fever. The Hungarian doctor Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis...

Hamburg, Germany 1934: An executioner is needed. Teetjen makes the biggest mistake of his life. Because his butcher shop is facing bankruptcy, he...

New teacher Heider takes up his post with great enthusiasm. His unconventional ideas meet with incomprehension and mistrust from the old head teacher...

After Jochen saves police officer Erich's life, the two men become close friends and Erich helps Jochen get a job working for Berlin's local train...

Shortly after WWII, the DEFA Studios produced a series of operas and operettas which belonged to the classical German musical heritage. This...

France at the time of the Restoration. The young country gentleman Rastignac comes to Paris to study. He takes up residence in a poor boarding house,...

Berlin 1952, seven years after WWII. Four women are looking for a good man and happiness in the divided city. Their destinies are loosely connected...

Sportivnyy prazdnik molodyozhi (Youth Sports Festival) (1951) is an East German sports documentary co-directed by Andrew Thorndike and Dmitri...

The Luisin ridge is divided not only by the river, but also by the zone boundary. The old CEO Högler still lives in the west, the eastern part...

On the Faroe Islands, people eke out a meagre existence by catching birds. Merchant Brause pays them little and does a good business. This comes...

A story about a family after the Second World War. The petty bourgeois cashier Karl Weber of Berlin observes from a distance how his son Ernst...