Kurt Weitkamp

During his trip to the city, a naïve man from the countryside falls victim to a thief who steals his wallet. Since all his personal documents were in it, he not only looses his money but also his identity. The thief turns out to be a cunning con man, who uses the papers for his criminal schemes. Soon enough, a warrant is issued, and eventually both men – the thief and the innocent guy – are arrested. But since all the red tape of the government causes even more confusion, the odyssey of the victim searching for his lost identity has just started.

A moving saga focusing on the women in a family that spans three generations and almost 70 years of German history, from the Wilhelmine period through the end of WWII. This film shows that it takes a combination of hard work, political consciousness and family work in tandem to face the tragedies of war, economic hardship and death.

Long before he played the corpulent Goldfinger, German actor Gert Froebe was a scarecrow-skinny comedian. In Berliner Ballade, Froebe makes his screen debut as Otto, a feckless Everyman who tries to adjust to the postwar travails of his defeated nation. Stymied by black-market profiteers and government bureaucrats, Otto begins fantasizing about a happier life at the end of that ever-elusive rainbow. Director R. A. Stemmle doesn't have to strive for pathos: he merely places his gangly star amidst the ruins of a bombed-out Berlin, and the point is made for him. Filmed in 1948, Berliner Ballade was later released in the U.S. as The Berliner.

La série des Tatort, créé en 1970, est la plus ancienne et la plus appréciée des séries télévisées policières diffusées actuellement dans les pays germanophones. Au cours de l'année 2010, elle a été regardée chaque semaine par près de 8,5 millions de personnes en moyenne, d'après l'ARD.