Schtonk

1992

German

7.1

♡ 4

Helmut Dietl Director

Ulrich Mühe as Dr. Wieland

Götz George as Hermann Willié

Veronica Ferres as Martha

Martin Benrath as Uwe Esser

Schtonk! is a farce of the actual events of 1983, when Germany's Stern magazine published, with great fanfare, 60 volumes of the alleged diaries of Adolf Hitler – which two weeks later turned out to be entirely fake. Fritz Knobel (based on real-life forger Konrad Kujau) supports himself by faking and selling Nazi memorabilia. When Knobel writes and sells a volume of Hitler's (nonexistent) diaries, he thinks it's just another job. When sleazy journalist Hermann Willié learns of the diaries, however, he quickly realizes their potential value... and Knobel is quickly in over his head. As the pressure builds and Knobel is forced to deliver more and more volumes of the fake diaries, he finds himself acting increasingly like the man whose life he is rewriting. The film is a romping and hilarious satire, poking fun not only at the events and characters involved in the hoax (who are only thinly disguised in the film), but at the discomfort Germany has with its difficult past.

Funny Games

1997

German

♡ 47

73%

Michael Haneke Director

Ulrich Mühe as Georg

Doris Kunstmann as Gerda

Susanne Meneghel as Gerdas Schwester

Wolfgang Glück as Robert

Two psychotic young men take a mother, father, and son hostage in their vacation cabin and force them to play sadistic "games" with one another for their own amusement.

The Lives of Others

2006

German

8.4

♡ 119

92%

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck Director

Werner Daehn as Einsatzleiter in Uniform

Ulrich Mühe as Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler

Matthias Brenner as Karl Wallner

Ulrich Tukur as Oberstleutnant Anton Grubitz

In 1984 East Berlin, dedicated Stasi officer Gerd Wiesler begins spying on a famous playwright and his actress-lover Christa-Maria. Wiesler becomes unexpectedly sympathetic to the couple, and faces conflicting loyalties when his superior takes a liking to Christa-Maria.

Amen.

2002

French

7.2

♡ 34

ss (nazi schutzstaffel)

vatican

vatican (holy see)

War

Costa-Gavras Director

Richard Durden as Ambassador Taylor

Justus von Dohnányi as Baron Von Otter

Ulrich Mühe as Doctor

Ulrich Tukur as Kurt Gerstein

Kurt Gerstein—a member of the Institute for Hygiene of the Waffen-SS—is appalled to discover that a poison gas he helped discover is being used to kill Jews. Driven by his conscience to alert the rest of the world, Gerstein teams up with a young Jesuit priest, Riccardo Fontana, but their protestations fall on deaf ears in the Vatican.