Margarethe von Trotta

Director

February 21, 1942 (84 years)

Berlin, Germany

Biography

Margarethe von Trotta (born 21 February 1942) is a German film director, screenwriter, and actress. She has been referred to as a "leading force" of the New German Cinema movement. Description above from the Wikipedia article Margarethe von Trotta, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Filmography

6.2

Scene of the Crime

Tatort is a long-running German/Austrian/Swiss, crime television series set in various parts of these countries. The show is broadcast on the channels of ARD in Germany, ORF in Austria and SF1 in Switzerland.

6.9

Hannah Arendt

A portrait of the genius that shook the world with her discovery of “the banality of evil.” After she attends the Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, Arendt dares to write about the Holocaust in terms no one has ever heard before. Her work instantly provokes a furious scandal, and Arendt stands strong as she is attacked by friends and foes alike. But as the German-Jewish émigré also struggles to suppress her own painful associations with the past, the film exposes her beguiling blend of arrogance and vulnerability — revealing a soul defined and derailed by exile.

6.4

Rosenstrasse

When Ruth's husband dies in New York, in 2000, she imposes strict Jewish mourning, which puzzles her children. A stranger comes to the house - Ruth's cousin - with a picture of Ruth, age 8, in Berlin, with a woman the cousin says helped Ruth escape. Hannah, Ruth's daughter engaged to a gentile, goes to Berlin to find the woman, Lena Fisher, now 90. Posing as a journalist investigating intermarriage, Hannah interviews Lena who tells the story of a week in 1943 when the Jewish husbands of Aryan women were detained in a building on Rosenstrasse. The women gather daily for word of their husbands. The film goes back and forth to tell Ruth and Lena's story. How will it affect Hannah?

7.0

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum

After a chance encounter with a wanted man, a woman is harassed by the police and press until she takes violent action.

9.0

Jahrestage

Gesine Cresspahl, who lives in New York, tells her eleven-year-old daughter Marie the family history during the period 1967–1968. In flashbacks, she describes the time in Germany before and during National Socialism and the early GDR. In doing so, she also draws on events that took place before her birth. Important stages in the narrative are the following aspects: On Kristallnacht, Gesine's mother commits suicide, her father spies for the British Army during the war and is imprisoned by the Soviets for several years in the Fünfeichen camp after the war ends. After the founding of the GDR, Gesine and her lover Jakob are pressured by the Stasi because they refuse to carry out certain assignments. Eventually, Gesine emigrates to West Germany and then to the USA.

6.6

Rosa Luxemburg

Polish socialist and Marxist Rosa Luxemburg works tirelessly in the service of revolution in early 20th century Poland and Germany. While Luxemburg campaigns for her beliefs, she is repeatedly imprisoned as she forms the Spartacist League offering a new vision for Germany.

6.2

Ingeborg Bachmann – Journey into the Desert

When Ingeborg Bachmann and Max Frisch meet for the first time in Paris in the summer of 1958, they are already international celebrities of the literary world. In the four years that follow, they dabble in great love and an open relationship between his hometown of Zurich and her adopted Rome.

7.0

Sheer Madness

Two women–a literature professor and a painter–start to rely upon their friendship as an alternative to their unhappy relationships with the men in their lives.

5.3

I Am the Other Woman

Successful architect Robert has a one-night stand with a mysterious lady in red. The next day they meet again, but Carolin is now a corporate lawyer working on a major contract for Robert ...

7.0

The Long Silence

Carla Aldrovandi, a gynecologist, and her husband Marco Canova, a magistrate live on the front line of criminal and political powers in Italy. She is surrounded by terror and threats.

7.0

Marianne and Juliane

Germany, 1968: The priest's daughters Marianna and Juliane both fight for changes in society, like making abortion legal. However their means are totally different: while Juliane's committed as a reporter, her sister joins a terroristic organization. After she's caught by the police and put into isolation jail, Juliane remains as her last connection to the rest of the world. Although she doesn't accept her sister's arguments and her boyfriend Wolfgang doesn't want her to, Juliane keeps on helping her sister. She begins to question the way her sister is treated.

5.9

Searching for Ingmar Bergman

A meaningful account of the personal and professional life of the great Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) that explores his film legacy, with interviews with his closest collaborators and a new generation of filmmakers.

6.6

The Promise

East-Berlin, 1961, shortly after the erection of the Wall. Konrad, Sophie and three of their friends plan a daring escape to Western Germany. The attempt is successful, except for Konrad, who remains behind. From then on, and for the next 28 years, Konrad and Sophie will attempt to meet again, in spite of the Iron Curtain. Konrad, who has become a reputed Astrophysicist, tries to take advantage of scientific congresses outside Eastern Germany to arrange encounters with Sophie. But in a country where the political police, the Stasi, monitors the moves of all suspicious people (such as Konrad's sister Barbara and her husband Harald), preserving one's privacy, ideals and self-respect becomes an exhausting fight, even as the Eastern block begins its long process of disintegration.

6.0

Vision - From the Life of Hildegard von Bingen

Hildegard von Bingen was truly a woman ahead of her time. A visionary in every sense of the word, this famed 12th-century Benedictine nun was a Christian mystic, composer, philosopher, playwright, poet, naturalist, scientist, physician, herbalist and ecological activist.

4.9

Love and Fear

Three sisters, played by Fanny Ardant, Greta Scacchi and Valeria Golino, struggle with their illusions, goals and desires in Margarethe von Trotta’s film adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s play.

5.7

Sisters, or The Balance of Happiness

Sisters Maria and Anna live together. Maria is a most proficient executive secretary, encouraging Anna to finish her studies and start a career. Anna broods, threatens to quit university, takes pills, and keeps a diary. When Maria's relationship with Maurice, the son of her boss, starts to lead to love, Anna takes a selfish and drastic step that plummets Maria into solitude. No longer able to connect with Maurice, Maria does establish a relationship with Miriam, a typist at her office who becomes a surrogate younger sister. But Maria is intrusive as well as helpful. Can this or any relationship work out for this talented woman whose past seems to choke her soul?

5.5

Forget About Nick

Against the backdrop of New York's dazzling fashion scene, a woman in the process of transforming herself from a model into a designer is forced to live with her husband's ex-wife when he disappears without a trace.

5.4

The Misplaced World

By chance Paul Kromberger discovers on the internet a photograph of the US opera diva Caterina Fabiani who is the spitting image of Evelyn, his dead wife. His unease and growing sense of alarm are transferred to his daughter, Sophie. Filled with curiosity, she leaves Germany and journeys across the Atlantic to make contact with this stranger.

5.6

The Other Woman

A German couple travels, shortly after reunification, to the Netherlands. Happiness does not last long. The wife receives a letter from an unknown woman.

6.1

The Second Awakening of Christa Klages

Three people rob a bank to help a day care center that's in debt. Wolf is captured, Werner identified, police suspect Christa is the third. She and Werner ask Hans, a clergyman, to launder the money and give it to the kindergarten. He refuses. They try Ingrid, Christa's friend, who tries to help, but the school rejects the money. When tragedy strikes Werner, Hans helps Christa bolt to a collective in Portugal. Ingrid visits her; their relationship makes the collective nervous, so she returns to Germany and ceases living in hiding. The police are still looking for her and so is a witness to the robbery, Lena, a bank clerk. Lena's interest brings Christa's second awakening.