Petra Tschörtner

Young people living in a children’s home in Mecklenburg talk about their unstable home situations and domestic violence. Many of them have alcoholic parents and some are in danger of going down the same path. They speak openly about the past and their hopes for a better life. The documentary follows the young men and women within the group and in search of personal space. A party to start the summer holidays marks not only the end of the school year – it also means that an entire class will be taking leave of the home forever.

In the little town of Herzsprung - whose name harks back to an ancient legend of broken hearts - almost nothing has changed since German unification, except a rise in unemployment. Johanna, a young mother and widow, becomes one of the unemployed and lives on welfare. To make matters worse, she falls in love with a dark-skinned, roving adventurer and the whole village starts talking about it.

The documentary reports on the goings-on at the only GDR racecourse in Berlin-Karlshorst. Pensioner Herta Rogau, who has been in charge of a betting counter for 15 years, tells how she came to this work and why she never dared to gamble herself. Her assessment of betting, gambling addicts, losers and winners enriches the footage shown of people at the betting counters, in the grandstand and of the exciting battles of the sulky drivers on the track.

Susi works in a large depot for waste paper, which is bundled and loaded onto trucks for recycling.

Portrait of the two main actors of the children's film "White Cloud Carolin", Andreas Roll and Constanze Berndt. They are observed and interviewed on several days during the making of the film. The two children introduce themselves directly to the viewer and talk openly and self-confidently about how they came to make the film and about their experiences during the course of filming.

The film depicts the everyday lives of children in Nicaragua in three episodes.

DEFA documentary on the residents of an East German children’s home, banned until after the fall of the Berlin Wall

Sabine Wulff is almost 18 when she is released from the juvenile detention center. She doesn't want to return to her unsupportive parents or to her former boyfriend Jimmy, who got her into trouble by persuading her to steal cigarettes. She instead chooses to begin an honest life by getting a job and renting her own room.

The film follows Circus Hein for a few days. Sandra, Benjamin, Enrico and Jessica are in the circus ring with their parents as clowns and acrobats.

"The Free Orchestra" is a group of young people who have various careers, and get together in their free time to make music. Improvisation and original hand made instruments mark the group's style. The individual members of the band are filmed at their daily work life and at one of their concerts. A collage of sounds arises, which conveys their life feelings and experiences, in a satirical and grotesque language.

It’s only after the separation from her husband that another man tells her how valuable she is: the Chladek family, she’s a teacher, he’s a student. The first few years were nothing but quarrels: the Surau family, he’s a plumber, she’s a postal worker. Should she really intend to get further education at evening school, he won’t accept this: the Lehmann family, he’s a locksmith, she’s a lecturer. Three thirtysomething couples live in the Potsdam high-rise behind whose windows Petra Tschörtner looked for her graduation film. Long interviews that pierce the surface at once, equally revealing and oppressive. Promptly awarded a prize at the West German Short Film Festival in Oberhausen.

In three parts, the documentary takes a look at the lives of three working mothers in East Berlin. Carola is a nude model and cleaner, Sabine is a singer and Heike is a secretary. All the women have to bring up their children alone, some of them abandoned by their husbands, some of them having consciously broken out of the housewife existence. Their self-determination is repeatedly thwarted by a repressive society. Director Petra Tschörner captures the daily struggle for survival of these women, who also have their say to explain their sometimes precarious situation from their own perspective.

A portrait of the class of 1978–1982 at the Munich University of Television and Film.

The Prenzlauer Berg district in the former East Berlin was a particularly intense example of the "short summer of anarchy" on the heels of the fall of the Wall. This merry, teary swan song is a pastiche of dancing seniors, revelling bohemians, transvestites from the West, and Balkan musicians. On a more serious note, we hear from women in positions of responsibility – workers at a state-run textile factory, as well as the owner of a clothing store fear for their financial future, while the lady boss at Konnopke's snack bar eagerly accepts her first payment in West German marks.

The filmmaker tells the story of her own grandmother, who died in a home, full of longing for her granddaughter. Being forgotten by sons and daughters, by the young, the beautiful and the successful is the fate of the elderly in this era.