Best movies like Berlin and Brandenburg From Above

Set in the Summer of 1988 and based on real events, the film tells the story of East-German twins Isabel and Doreen, two aspiring oarswomen, whose lives are changed dramatically during a training camp at Lake Balaton in Hungary. There, the girls make the acquaintance of West-German friends Arne and Nico. The holiday flirt soon turns serious when Doreen and Arne fall in love. As the end of their stay approaches, Arne asks the inseparable sisters to flee to the West with him…

A US intelligence officer, stationed in Germany, is caught in a political dilemma when the Russians kidnap a young Army private, the son of prominent American businessman. In exchange for the soldier's return, the Russians attempt to barter a trade for an elderly German couple who they want for treason.

The untold story about wild rabbits which lived between the Berlin Walls. For 28 years Death Zone was their safest home. Full of grass, no predators, guards protecting them from human disturbance. They were closed but happy. When their population grew up to thousands, guards started to remove them. But rabbits survived and stayed there. Unfortunately one day the wall fell down. Rabbits had to abandon comfortable system. They moved to West Berlin and have been living there in a few colonies since then. They are still learning how to live in the free world, same as we - the citizens of Eastern Europe.

A train speeds through the country on its way to Berlin, then gradually slows down as it pulls into the station. It is very early in the morning, about 5:00 AM, and the great city is mostly quiet. But before long there are some signs of activity, and a few early risers are to be seen on the streets. Soon the new day is well underway. It's just a typical day in Berlin, but a day full of life and energy.

A semi-documentary experimental 1930 German silent film created by amateurs with a small budget. With authentic scenes of the metropolis city of Berlin, it's the first film from the later famous screenwriters/directors Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann.

A group of kids grow up on the short, wrong (east) side of the Sonnenallee in Berlin, right next to one of the few border crossings between East and West reserved for German citizens. The antics of these kids, their families, of the "West German" friends and relatives who come to visit, and of the East German border guards, all serve to illustrate the absurdity of everyday life on the Sonnenallee, and therefore throughout the former East Germany.

U.S. spies catch a Moscow-born U.S. citizen helping spies, and they force him to counterspy.

Berlin, 1989. Sascha is a young East German border guard and Franzi is a lively young West German woman who's just moved into a flat next to Sascha's watchtower at the Berlin Wall. It takes only a slight mishap and a selfless act of chivalry and the two fall in love. But soon the Stasi believes they are witnessing the start of a revolt. This is the time of mass protests and East Germans taking refuge in the West German embassy in Prague after all. Franzi and Sascha have to find their ways to stand up for their love and strive for the impossible; to bring down the wall.

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.

Not an easy decision! District Administrator Hans Schuierer from the Upper Palatinate first opposed his own political line in 1981 and finally against the entire Bavarian Free State and Prime Minister Strauss. Because the planned reprocessing plant Wackersdorf promised 3,000 new jobs for the structurally weak region - but what if these are associated with massive health and ecological damage for future generations? Isn't it then the duty of a politician and citizen to resist?

End of the 1970s in East Germany: Fred and Jonas are close friends. The 10-year-olds live near at the German-German frontier. After the mother from Jonas has made an exit application, the boys have to recognize that they are soon separated from each other. But they want to dig a tunnel to Australia to meet there themselves again. When Jonas should leave the country with his mother this night changes everything.

At the end of the 1950s, the production of optics in the German Democratic Republic has reached top quality and instigates interest in the West. When national demand rises strongly and at the same time the export to South America heavily decreases, the Volkspolizei - the GDR police force - starts to look into the case. Two seemingly unrelated cases are the starting point for the investigation by second lieutenant Schellenberg of the department for optics racketeering: An old woman who was arrested in the Berlin city railway for trying to smuggle a pair of binoculars to West Berlin, and a dead person in an area of allotments who was involved in obscure dealings with optical devices.

A road movie about two very different brothers who have not seen each other for 20 years: city manager Christian and cabinetmaker Georg, who never left their hometown and took care of their father until his passing. After their fathers funeral, the brothers decide on a whim, and with some help from the alcohol, to fulfil their old dream: travel trough Germany together on their mopeds.

Meier, a paperhanger in East Berlin, inherits from his father in West Berlin. With this money he wants to fulfil himself the dream of his life: a journey around the world. He buys a forged West German passport and pretends to go on a trip to Bulgaria while he really is off to see the free world. When he wants to return to East Berlin he finds himself in an unbelievable predicament and his double life begins. He can't keep away from his East German friends. As with all the best comedies, the action builds up to an eventual crisis. It's a light comedy, which won several national Film Academy Awards. The film is very political, with lots of political jokes/innuendos which only Germans will understand. One is left feeling what a total obscenity that stupid Wall was, dividing one people for 30 years (1-2 Generations) simply by the coincidence on where you just happen to be in the early morning on the 13th August 1961.

East Germany, 1988: working as a state security service agent, Jürgen Kaiser is loyal to the party line, but worried about his son Marco, a punk. As he is arrested after a concert, Marco is forced to join the army, where he surprisingly identifies with socialism and believes he has to defend his country against the capitalist enemy. While Jürgen is astonished, his wife Hanna and Marco's girlfriend Anja, supporting the civil rights movement, don't like his new attitude...

A massive explosion rips though a busy street in Istanbul, Turkey. 95 people are dead; 30 Americans and 5 British. The massacre sends shock waves from Turkey to London and Washington, DC. A new terrorist organization is behind the attack. The explosion is just the beginning. Labyrinth' is the code name of the operation conducted by Turkish intelligence to stop a second, more devastating attack that will plunge Turkey, the only democratic Muslim country in the region, into chaos and destroy the fragile balance of the Middle East. After the initial attack, Turkey becomes a battlefront for terrorists and Turkish, British and American intelligence officers. Everyone has his own agenda in the fight that stretches from Istanbul to Eastern Turkey and from Frankfurt to Northern Iraq.

It's been 25 years since they graduated from high school or could have done it if they had not left before, made honors rounds or simply failed. Now they meet again at the class reunion, the former best of class, the former genius, the ex-class brat, the ex-class-ass, in their mid-40s, and suddenly face the people with whom they dreamed their future life , But what actually happened in the meantime?

Fiona Shaw narrates this exploration of Russia's medieval origins through to its bloody expansion to become the biggest country in the world. It's a tale that set the scene for one of the world's most enigmatic figures, and his vision of modern Russia. From a tyrannical grip on ordinary citizens to rampant corruption at the highest level, this film reveals the secrets behind holding the world's largest country together in a narrative that takes in the KGB and its ancestors as well as Stalin, murder and gulags.

Neil Armstrong's family and friends, many of whom have never spoken publicly before, tell the story of the first man to set foot on the moon. Drawing heavily on unbroadcast archive footage and the unique perspectives of the contributors, this is an exclusive account of Neil Armstrong's extraordinary life story. From his childhood during America's Great Depression to the heady days of the space programme, his historic first step on the Moon and his famously private later life. Seen through the eyes of those who were with him, the film explores the man behind the myth, a man who was very much a product of his time. The film goes beyond his days as an astronaut and shows that his life after the flight of Apollo 11 was, in many ways equally challenging, as Armstrong came to terms with life outside NASA and the relentless demands of fame until his death in August 2012.

It was arguably the deadliest conference in human history. The topic: plans to murder 11 million Jews in Europe. The participants were not psychopaths, but educated men from the SS, police, administration and ministries. The invitation to the meeting at Wannsee came from Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office. The Wehrmacht's campaigns of conquest in Eastern Europe marked the beginning of the systematic murder of Jews in Poland and the Soviet Union. In mid-September 1941, Hitler made the decision to deport all Jews from Germany to the East. Although there had been transports before, Hitler's order represented a further escalation in the murderous decision-making process. Persecution and discrimination had been part of everyday life since 1933. But as a result, the living conditions for the Jews in the Third Reich became even more difficult, among them the Berlin Jew Margot Friedländer, born in 1921, and the Chotzen family.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned far-right protesters who were "hunting down" foreigners in street mobs following the killing of a German man, allegedly by a Syrian and an Iraqi. The far-right movement PEGIDA called for demonstrations for a second straight day after a gathering of around 800 people in the city of Chemnitz in the country's ex-communist east degenerated into violent chaos, forcing police to call in reinforcements.

In Rwanda, Africa, a new era is dawning after a brutal civil war ripped through the country, killing close to two million people and wiping out its most iconic wildlife: the regal lion. Now, 25 years later, the big cats are being reintroduced to the region to reclaim their throne. Follow this magnificent seven, a collection of five females and two males, as they travel thousands of miles from South Africa to Akagera National Park and attempt to figure out their new land, form relationships, and restore the pride of a nation.

On December 6, 1917, Finland declared its independence from Russia. A detailed chronicle of the major events in the history of this young European nation.

13 August 1961: the GDR closes the sector borders in Berlin. The city is divided overnight. Escape to the West becomes more dangerous every day. But on September 14, 1962, exactly one year, one month and one day after the Wall was built, a group of 29 people from the GDR managed to escape spectacularly through a 135-meter tunnel to the West. For more than 4 months, students from West Berlin, including 2 Italians, dug this tunnel. When the tunnel builders ran out of money after only a few meters of digging, they came up with the idea of marketing the escape tunnel. They sell the film rights to the story exclusively to NBC, an American television station.

In 1989, thirteen GDR scientists and technicians set off from East Berlin to the Georg Forster research station in the Antarctic. During their expedition the Berlin Wall fell on November 9th. Cut off from the images that go around the world, the men can only experience the historical events passively. When they returned in the spring of 1991, their homeland was a foreign country. The documentary reconstructs the thoughts and feelings of the East German researchers on the basis of eyewitness accounts, diary excerpts, letters, film material, grandiose landscape shots from the location of the action and unique photos to make the consequences of the events tens of thousands of kilometers away on the small GDR expedition in the middle of the eternal ice tangible.

“Liberty Train – Bürger’s Long Journey” sheds light on the events of the PEACEFUL REVOLUTION of 1989 from different perspectives. It centres on the eyewitnesses who, together with thousands of other people who had fled East Germany, were in the garden of the West German Embassy in Prague on the evening of the 30 September 1989.

Director Bernd Sahling documents almost four years in the life of a young man who experienced two political systems, East and West Germany, and cannot fulfill his dreams in either of them.

East Berlin, shortly after the construction of the Berlin Wall. Kurt Schröder and his family dig a tunnel to escape to West Berlin as they struggle to overcome the obstacles blocking their underground path to freedom.

Yearning to leave behind his life of misfortune in the Middle East, Ibrahim Jarrah wins the U.S. Green Card Lottery for a chance to become an American citizen. Ibrahim lands in New York City the day before 9/11…and the events of the September terrorist attacks forever shape the struggles he faces on his journey to capture the American dream.

The Commanding Officer of an RAF Training School must deal with a difficult cadet, but the cadet reminds the C.O. of himself when young.

The beautiful Raphaela is the dream girl of Alpha City, a decadent metropolis. The rather naive Frank falls in love with this very woman, who shows no interest in him. A mysterious American comes to Raphaela to keep her admirer off. But love is a strange game - and sometimes a dangerous one.

When Dr. Schmith's proposal for international research on infant mortality is rejected, he decides to leave East Germany and strikes a deal with an escape agency that promises him a leading position at a children's hospital in West Germany. But then the decision is reversed: the project is approved and his international colleagues want Dr. Schmith to head the GDR section. Moreover, he falls in love with his new colleague, Katharina. Schmith initially tries to ignore the arrangements he made with the escape agency, but they blackmail him. Things soon turn deadly...

1964 in Berlin, not long after the raise of the wall that separated the city: ex-prisoner Bruno is chosen by the eastern secret agency to be sent west with a special order. However as soon as he's crossed the border, he reports to the police. He claims his order was to kidnap someone, but he doesn't know who yet. He's forced to continue feignedly. However the east agents don't really trust him and play a double game...

In 1986, Anna from West Germany and the GDR citizen Philipp meet at a church youth exchange in East Berlin. It's love at first sight. But it is also an impossible love, because between them stands the wall.