Best movies like The Tempest

Like the best USIA films, The Wall distills political events into an emotionally clear and compelling ideological "story". In 1962 Walter de Hoog gathered footage from U.S. and German newsreel sources and crafted this taut short film about the first year of the Berlin Wall. Straightforward, keenly balanced narration portrays Berliners as "accepting the wall but never resigned to it". The extraordinary footage of the first escapes was propaganda enough-- His challenge was to make the politics human.

A gangster is put in prison, but finds salvation through music while serving his time. Again on the outside, he finds success elusive and temptations abound.

The English adventurer Tom Lingard gets involved with islanders on a South Seas island, and he also gets involved with Lady Edith and Mr. Travers, a sailing English couple. Tom has an unexpected love affair with Edith and while they are having this affair, Lady Edith husband's boat is destroyed and he is killed.

Franz Biberkopf has served four years in prison. His return to normal life is not successful.

In 2015, thirty year old refugee Francis, the sole survivor of a boat that illegally crossed the Mediterranean, is drawn into Berlin's seedy underbelly.

Better known for her work in talkie "weepers," Helen Twelvetrees made a few preliminary appearances in such late silent films as Fox's Blue Skies. The audience was expected to believe that the twentysomething Twelvetrees and Frank Albertson are teenagers living together platonically in an orphan asylum. A wealthy old man comes calling to adopt Albertson -- who, feeling sorry for Twelvetrees, trades places with the girl. Thus it is that the heroine is carted off to a luxurious mansion, while Albertson remains behind. One year later, the old man discovers Albertson's deception, whereupon he invites the boy to live with him as well. By this time, Twelvetrees and Albertson are of marriageable age, thus the film ends with a wedding in the offing.

This first cinematic version of the classic book is a part-talkie, although the only surviving print is silent (housed in the George Eastman House, Rochester, NY). It is a straight-forward telling of the intermingled lives of a group of strangers doomed to die in a collapsing bridge accident. The Art Direction, paltry and unremarkable, surprisingly won an Oscar over the far more remarkable work nominated in THE IRON MASK. The special effect scene of the lovers plummeting with the bridge into the chasm is unforgettable and remarkably done.

“Brüder”, a film directed by Herr Werner Hochbaum ( who was a remarkable film director in the talkie 30’s ), was one of those films which showed the harsh daily life of the working class. The film depicts, in a kind of fictional documentary, the 1896 Hamburg dockworkers' strike: the workers receive meagre wages for hard work and live under miserable conditions and finally go on strike (to make matters more personal, one of the strikers has a brother who is a policeman). Even though the inspiration for the story was an event that took place in the XIX century, things had little changed by the troublesome twenties so the story had a perfect contemporary ring.

Erich Kästner’s beloved novel has been adapted for film or television six times since its publication in 1929; this 1935 British version was the first in English. Believed lost for decades, it was recently rediscovered by the BFI and has now been restored. The film moves the action from Berlin to London, where Emil goes to stay with his grandmother and cousin. Thereafter, the tale of Emil’s adventures with a gang of streetwise London children faithfully follows the original plot.

This is a family story that covers thirty years in the life of the Freytag family (narrated by the grandson, Robert). When his grandfather returns from Russia in 1949, he becomes part of the German "economic miracle" by producing garden gnomes. Klaus, Robert's father, wants to become a writer. He marries Gisela who almost immediately gets pregnant with Robert - but the marriage doesn't work. Both parents abandon the child, and Robert goes on living with both pairs of grand parents. While his father belongs to the 1968 generation that rebels against their fathers he falls in love with the neighbor's's daughter Laura.

One of the last great German Expressionist films of the silent era, Joe May’s Asphalt is a love story set in the traffic-strewn Berlin of the late 1920s. Starring the delectable Betty Amann in her most famous leading role, Asphalt is a luxuriously produced UFA classic where tragic liaisons and fatal encounters are shaped alongside the constant roar of traffic.

After the end of the GDR, thrashings, threats and hunts were part of everyday life. In the years after the reunification of the early 1990s, hatred, racism and violence against foreigners and supporters of leftist ideology broken out in Eastern Germany. Most of those involved was young people. In many cities and towns, the streets and squares belonged to the right-wing scene, organized in neo-Nazi comradeships. Bomber jackets, combat boots and the Hitler salute showed the intimidated rest where they were. The baseball bat was a popular weapon. There were riots, attacks on asylum seekers' homes, mass brawls and hunt downs to those who look or think differently. It doesn't took long and the first deaths were to be mourned. The majority of the Eastern German population looked the other way or even applauded the deeds. A bad omen for the political development of later years. In six film segments, a team of authors take a look at the time reflected in interviews with contemporary witnesses.

Remake of a 1929 German film by the same title about a man and a police dog.

Germany refuses to receive any more refugees. The only way to obtain citizenship is to survive the popular TV show 'Immigration Game'. Whoever participates as a 'Runner' will be abandoned on the outskirts of Berlin and must make their way to the television tower at Alexanderplatz. For a prize money every German citizen may chase and eventually kill the refugees entirely unpunished.

A fire breaks out in the Berlin Fernsehturm (Radio Tower) trapping several people in the restaurant and observation deck at the top. A team of firefighters, including a disgraced former member, rush to the rescue as chaos erupts among the trapped.

Freddie owns a failing old hotel. To attract new business he spreads the rumor that there's pirate treasure hidden somewhere in the building.

Documentary about the making of the 1980 German television series.

The intricate history of UFA, a film production company founded in 1917 that has survived the Weimar Republic, the Nazi regime, the Adenauer era and the many and tumultuous events of contemporary Germany, and has always been the epicenter of the German film industry.

Passion carried an innocent boy and a worldly woman beyond the barriers of conscience.

Mutter Krause, her daughter Erna and her son Paul live in a tenement in the poorer section of Berlin's Wedding district. Along with them lives "the Tenant", his soon-to-be bride Friede, who works as a prostitute, and her child whose name isn't revealed in the film. Mutter Krause is a quiet, long-suffering old woman who earns what little she can delivering newspapers. However, Paul is an alcoholic and spends all her money on drink. Mutter Krause can't pay back the money she owes the man whose newspapers she delivered and he accuses her of stealing and threatens her with arrest. Mutter Krause must then pawn her last valuable possession, a treasured memento of her late husband. Paul then breaks into the same pawn shop. He gets away but is later arrested. Meanwhile, Erna begins dating a young man with Communist views, who turns Erna to Communism and also helps her earn the money her mother needs by more honest means.

A prince in disguise saves a runaway princess from becoming a forger's dupe.

This Zane Grey adaptation stars square-jawed Jack Holt as a lawman going undercover to ferret out a notorious cattle rustler.

Fox's immediate follow-up to its successful early-talkie western In Old Arizona was 1929's Romance of the Rio Grande. The story focuses on the Alvarez family of Mexico, specifically fabulously wealthy Don Fernando. Intending to bequeath his vast fortune and estate to his long-estranged grandson Pancho, Don Fernando must contend with his ne'er-do-well nephew Juan.

Ranch owner Tex McCloud is convinced there is oil under his property and brings in a drilling rig and equipment to drill for it. But a gang who wants the property wage a sabotage and theft war against him.

Dick Carlysle returns home to find that his mother has married Brute Kettle who is really out to get the Carlysle ranch. First Kettle gets Bennett to forge a letter saying Dick relinquishes his inheritance in the ranch and then he tries to get Dick's mother to relinquish hers.

Story of a cowboy tracking down his father's killer

Henry Weatherby is buying up ranch land to sell as right of way for a new road. When he sends his son Dick and his nephew Pete to kick the Wayne's off their ranch, Dick rebels and joins the Wayne's in their fight against his father.

A young doctor gets stuck on a ship after treating an injured first mate. Later, he rescues a woman from plane wreckage, and with the help of the cook, he hides her away from the rowdy and dangerous crew.

In 1929 music teacher Paul Leinert receives an unexpected letter from his old friend Otto Schiffmann, a young and talented composer who has moved away from Berlin after a failed marriage. The letter is an invitation for Paul to come and visit Otto in his forest cabin – and to become familiar with his new work, a long-awaited symphony. Taking along his wife Anna together with his colleague Willi, the three find Otto’s cabin but their host is nowhere to be seen. As they go looking for him, Paul notices something odd about the song of the local birds...

This film was released in both silent and sound versions.

Police battle against a gang of blackmailers known as The Crimson Circle.

Der Stolz der Firma, meaning The Pride of the Business, is a classic German silent film from 1914. The film tells the story of a shrewd apprentice and is filmed in the comical style of director Lubitsch. This is one of the few Lubitsch films from World War I that wasn’t lost.