Peter Kalisch

Großer Frieden (1989)

The Distance Between You and Me and Her (1988)

Journalist Marga is commissioned by her editor-in-chief to interview a rock singer, Anne, from Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin. When Robert, an unpublished poet and Anne's ex-boyfriend, shows up, Marga becomes way more interested in her interview assignment. A l ...

Die erste Reihe (1987)

Berlin in the 1930s - Adolf Hitler comes to power, communists and social democrats are persecuted, books are burned and Jewish citizens are ostracized. The outwardly shiny façade of Berlin, the capital of the Reich, reveals nothing of the unequal struggle ...

Childhood (1987)

Alfons lives with his grandparents on a Silesian village farm at the end of WWII. He adores his grandmother, who runs everything after her husband dies. But everything changes after the appearance of a traveling showman in the xenophobic village. ...

Die Weihnachtsklempner (1986)

Plumber Martin and his younger colleague Frank are on call on Christmas Eve of all days. Frank's girlfriend Regina, who is expecting her first baby at any moment, is anything but thrilled. But it doesn't help, duty is duty. One emergency call follows anoth ...

Das wirkliche Blau (1986)

The real blue is the color with which potter Benito Guerrero makes his fortune. When he no longer receives the color from Germany as a result of the Second World War, he and his family's existence are threatened. However, with the help of his inventive cou ...

Ernst Thälmann (1986)

This elaborate two-part television film features a section from the life of communist worker leader Ernst Thälmann. It begins with the bloody riots on May 1, 1929 in Berlin, in which police officers shot at demonstrating workers, and ends with February 7, ...

Visiting Van Gogh (1985)

In the 22nd Century, antiquities command huge prices. A woman uses a time machine to travel back the the 19th Century in order to buy paintings from Vincent Van Gogh before he was famous. Will she be wealthy upon her return? ...

Mathilde Möhring (1983)

Adaptation of Theodor Fontane's novel. ...

Der Mann und sein Name (1983)

The young Walter Retzlow, drafted into the guard team of a foreign labor factory in the last year of the war, receives the papers of a murdered anti-fascist by chance. He adopts the new identity, which promises him security. ...

Martin XIII. (1981)

The oceans seem to be the Nehls' second home. But there is one exception that Grandpa Nehl, alias Martin XI, captain of a training sailing ship, is not at all happy with. His son Martin XII is the first of the family to work ashore. A scandal, really, but ...

Die Stunde der Töchter (1981)

A life-threatening heart attack confines Richard Roth to the hospital bed. There, Richard, who is in his late fifties, asks himself what will remain of him and his life. What happened to his four daughters? Do they take after him? How have they developed? ...

Blaue Pferde auf rotem Gras (1980)

In 1920 Moscow, a wounded Red Guard paints "Blue Horses on Red Grass" to symbolize hope he'll never see. He presents it to a gravely ill Lenin amid famine, inspiring Lenin to reaffirm his legacy and resolve as he leads Bolsheviks in rationing scarce food f ...

Salz und Brot und gute Laune (1980)

Der Baulöwe (1980)

The successful entertainment artist Ralf Keul must develop his land on the Baltic Sea or else ultimately give it up. Inexperienced yet courageous, he hurls himself into the undertaking, which spares him no unpleasantness. He battles over the transportation ...

Die Schmuggler von Rajgrod (1980)

In 1903, Jan Anskath and his half-brother Martin are living in Rajgorod at the border between Russia and Prussia – Jan on the Russian, Martin on the Prussian side. Both are occasionally smuggling stuff over the border. But while Jan acts from political c ...

Ein Mann und seine Frau (1979)

Lachtauben weinen nicht (1979)

The film tells the story of the smelter brigade of a steel mill whose members are connected by a strong comradeship. Among the workers are, for instance, young Rolf, whom everybody just calls "Lachtaube" and who always comes through for his co-workers, or ...

Addio, piccola mia (1979)

Last years in the Life of german Dramatican Georg Büchner. Around the year 1830 he and his fellow students try to initiate a revolution in Germany, but they are not successful. Büchner has to leave the country and seeks exile in France and Switzerland, w ...

Ursula (1978)

Switzerland 1523. The mercenary Hansli Gyr returns with his soldiers from Italy to his home in the Oberland. They have fought for the Pope and now find a religious upheaval in Switzerland. ...

Anton the Magician (1978)

A flamboyant comedy about love, work and money—revealing that the "planned" economy produced some unconventional entrepreneurial methods. ...

Eine Handvoll Hoffnung (1978)

Berlin at the end of the 1940s. Anneliese Weyher is working as a switchboard operator. She is living with her aunt after losing her parents in the war – a stroke of fate that has thrown the young woman off course emotionally. Indifferently, she is doing ...

Goldene Zeiten - Feine Leute (1977)

Historical television comedy around Friedrich Alfred Krupp, whose connection to the imperial court and the influence of Kaiser Wilhelm II. to the Krupp family. Not yet 50 years old, the "cannon king" dies in 1902. The emperor holds a memorial speech sown w ...

The Island of the Silver Herons (1977)

The late summer of 1918. Paul, Willi and Heinrich from an age-old German town are good friends, although there is a great deal that divides them. Heinrich comes from an officer's family with an army tradition and is preparing to enter cadet college. Paul's ...

Sein letzter Fall (1976)

Private detective Fritsch from Munich had received a lucrative assignment: he was to obtain proof of inheritance for a Mr. Seligmann from Canada; this would bring the client a sum of five million dollars. He is therefore looking for an old document that wa ...

Censored: Kuhle Wampe (1975)

A detailed reconstruction of the censorship case against the landmark Weimar-era communist film, Kuhle Wampe, or Who Owns the World? (1932). Directed by Slatan Dudow, the crew and cast included left-wing luminaries, such as playwright Bertolt Brecht, compo ...

Looping (1975)

The thirty year old bee is a daredevil, everything seems to work for him. But suddenly a tragic event tears him out of his carelessness. In the explosion of a carbide furnace in operation, a colleague is killed. ...

Ich war in Honolulu – wetten? (1974)

Uwe is a chemistry student and works as an excavator driver on various construction sites at weekends. One weekend, he meets the nursery nurse Gabi. As it turns out later, they owe their encounter to the daughter of the construction site brigadier Trunzer. ...

Maria und der Paragraph (1974)

Maria is a record saleswoman by profession. She is lucky to have a job, because the year is 1930 and a major economic crisis has hit the world, accompanied by an army of unemployed people, especially in Germany. Maria is aware of her good fortune; in order ...

Der aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui (1974)

Hitler's seizure of power in 1933 and his rule in the years that followed are transferred to the North American criminal world of the 1930s in a parable. Gangster boss Ui needs the protection of the ruling class to achieve his goals and offers his help to ...

Unterm Birnbaum (1973)

Abel Hradscheck, the owner of an inn in the Oderbruch country, faces financial ruin. For this state of affairs, Ursula, his wife and former actress, is by no means free of blame. She is a "newcomer" to the area and even after eleven years in the area, stil ...

Optimistische Tragödie (1971)

During the October Revolution in 1917 the Bolshevik Party appointed a woman commissioner of the "Free Anarchist-Revolutionary Section". This regiment emerged from an anarchist division of the ship of the line "Imperator Paul I. ...

Zwei Briefe an Pospischiel (1970)

Paul Pospischiel loses his job in the great colliery collapse in the Ruhr, retrains and builds a new life for himself. One day, he receives a letter from his mother, which tears him from his comfort zone and triggers a serious conflict. She has discovered ...

Im Spannungsfeld (1970)

Electronic data processing is an absolute must in the Information Age. Karl Hoppe, the director of a large plant, is aware of this need for modernization and hires mathematician Dr. Jochen Bernhardt to install computerized systems which are supposed to cal ...

The Seventh Year (1969)

Dr. Barbara Heim, a heart surgeon, and Gunter Heim, a well-known actor, have been married for seven years. They have a six-year-old daughter. Both partners are totally taken up by their work which is physically and mentally demanding. So there is little ti ...

Adelsnest (1969)

Stories of That Night (1967)

Four directors - four styles - four episodes, all relating the events of a single night which has entered the history books: August 12-13, 1961. There are thousands of complex narratives connected with the frontier drawn through the middle of Berlin, and e ...

Brennende Ruhr (1967)

The two-piece black and white movie "Brennende Ruhr" portrays the events during the Kapp-Putsch 1920 in a small german town in the Ruhr district. The main protagonist is Ernst Sukrow, a student who sympathises first with the bourgeois forces but finally de ...

Die Tage der Commune (1966)

Victory and demise of the first proletarian dictatorship in the history of mankind, about the struggling, bleeding workers of Paris who enthusiastically defend their historical initiative. The little Cabet family from Rue Pigalle and their friends let the ...

The Best Years (1965)

In 1945, Ernst Machner returns home from the war in his mid-20s. Tuche would like him to weave for a living, but his comrades persuade him to become a young teacher instead. ...

As Long as There’s Life in Me (1965)

This is part one of a two-part biopic about Karl Liebknecht. In 1914, Germany is arming itself for war. Karl Liebknecht, left-wing revolutionary Social Democrat, workers' leader and a virulent antimilitarist, is one among 110 SPD members of Parliament who ...

Carbide and Sorrel (1963)

After the second World War, Dresden has a lot of reconstructing to do. To get the cigarette factory he once worked for running again, Kalle has to travel to Wittenberg - the only place where carbide can be found. Once there, Kalle find himself in the unfor ...

Mother Courage and Her Children (1961)

During the Thirty Years' War, the camp-follower Anna Fierling, called "Mother Courage", travels the length and breadth of Europe with her covered wagon. She does not care if it's Catholics or Protestants she trades with as long as business thrives. She los ...

An Old Love (1959)

Frieda and August Walkowiak celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary. However, the marriage has been in crisis for some time. August wants to spend his old age in peace, while Frieda has no intention of giving up her position as LPG chairman. The problems ...

They Called Him Amigo (1959)

A refugee from a Nazi concentration camp is discovered by some boys in WWII Berlin. They provide him with food and help him to continue his flight. Later one of the boys, the son of a communist, is charged with theft, arrested and sent to a concentration c ...

Katzgraben (1957)

Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (1957)

Set during the Thirty Years' War between 1624 and 1636, film tells the story of the sutler Anna Fierling, known as Mother Courage, who tries to make her fortune from the war and loses her three children in the process. ...

Das Stacheltier - Der Wintermantel (1954)

A little man wants to order a warm coat from a fabric he has brought with him to a tailor's workshop in winter. He is laughed at and told that orders for this type of garment are only accepted in the summer - after all, they work to a schedule. When the cu ...