The emaciated weavers deliver their homework to the factory owner Dreißiger and receive their wages, on which they cannot live and cannot die. Driven by hunger, they ask for more money, but to no avail. Only the young baker and the reservist Jäger put up a fight, and both manage to encourage a large group of weavers to revolt against the factory owner. They break into his house and destroy it, whereupon he flees. The revolt continues, the weavers move through the surrounding villages, where more people join them. A little later, the military arrives to intervene against the angry crowd and restore the old order...

Maria is a record saleswoman by profession. She is lucky to have a job, because the year is 1930 and a major economic crisis has hit the world, accompanied by an army of unemployed people, especially in Germany. Maria is aware of her good fortune; in order to secure it, she has to do without many things. What business owner would employ an unmarried woman with a child in times like these? When Maria became pregnant, she, like many other women, had to become "active" and do something about this "misfortune". So she seeks "help" from a female doctor, trusting in her youth and hoping for better times when family happiness could come true for her.

Germany 1932, constant fights between Communists and Nazis tear the country apart. When a Communist is found dead, the police accuses another Communist being his murderer. But the Communist youth group follows another trail - the murderer left a characteristic boot print at the scene of the crime.

In the late fifties a large industrial complex was built near Schwedt, in the GDR. This low budget film tells about the voluntary participation of the brigades of the Freie Deutsche Jugend in the building up …

Alwin Schmieder, his brother August and friend Otto were the only ones in the village to refuse to join the LPG. They continue to toil on their own, and everything in the Schmieder household has gone haywire since Alwin became a widower. At least he needs a wife, but he doesn't like the applicants for Alwin's marriage advertisements. He rejects Barbara, his son Karl's girlfriend, without knowing her - because she is from the city. But suddenly there is movement in the Schmieders' lives. August wants to marry the agronomist Karoline and move in with her in the neighboring village. Barbara, who sneaks into the house on a pretext, wins Alwin's sympathy and he asks Karl to marry her. When it turns out that the young people have set him up, he is furious. And last but not least, Otto joins the LPG. Alwin is the last to see the light.

DEFA crime film about the smuggling of PVC across the (still open) border from East to West Berlin.

A musician seeks a peaceful vacation in a Vogtland village but is soon overwhelmed by requests for a symphonic composition and a pop song for a local dance band, leaving him with no time to relax.

Lifelong hard work for the count makes the servant Anton a cripple. Everybody calls him Crooked Anton. When, after the end of the war, the land of the count gets divided amongst the farmers, Anton receives a piece and hopes to be able to work freely. But an old debt and intrigue keep Anton and his family from finding peace. The farmers of the village begin to discover their own power when Annegret, Anton's daughter, leaves. Is a new beginning possible for Anton? This film paints an impressive panorama of the development of a minor village in Mecklenburg from the end of the war to the uprising of 17 June 1953.

Children's book illustrator Müller-Olbernhau has a secure livelihood in East Berlin. He and his wife Brigitte, who is very impressed by the "western glamor", are visited by Uncle Rüdiger Lorenz from the Rhine. Under their influence, he moves to West Germany, also annoyed by the publishing house and because, according to his wife, he lacks "pizzazz". There he was asked to illustrate comics with violent and cruel depictions for a Frankfurt publisher. He witnesses arguments between three other graphic artists and the publishing house manager. When he asks one of them, Hertwig, who is no longer "playing along", what he is doing now, he is told that he is going to a "real children's book publisher" in East Berlin. Brigitte is astonished: "Isn't that where we just came from?" As she looks at Leo in surprise, he writes on her forehead in lipstick: "That's it."