A brave prince must seek the fabled singing, ringing tree in order to win the heart of a beautiful princess.

On a barren and stormy island, fishing families eke out a meager existence on what they can catch during summer, and what washes ashore during winter. But little has been washing ashore of late, and their situation worsens. Elders recall how twenty years ago, when the lighthouse keeper’s beacon went dark, a cargo ship broke apart on the cliffs. It proved a bountiful accident for the fishermen. Today people on the island view the conscientious lighthouse keepers with evil hungry eyes...

Several children find out what's the matter with a wreck offshore, which puts them into jeopardy.

A Short Film by Richard Groschopp.

In 1952, former farmhand Erich Kattner arrives in a Mecklenburg village from West Germany to take on a new farming job, which he had originally planned to do together with his wife. She has died shortly beforehand, and so he finds himself alone with the almost unmanageable work. His predecessor has capitulated, the new house and barn are only half-finished, tree stumps still have to be cleared in the fields and much more besides. He is skeptical of outside help. He asks Thekla, the maid of the richest farmer, whom he met on his first day in the village, to start working for him, but she refuses. When she does start working on Erich's farm after an approach from her "master", he only sees her as a work partner.

East Germany's contribution to the 1957 Cannes Film Festival was the wartime melodrama Betrogen bis zum Juengsten Tag. Had the film been released in the U.S., the title would probably have translated to Duped Till the Last. The film condemns the Nazi mindset by concentrating on a particularly odious cover-up. When his son is involved in the accidental killing of a girl, a Gestapo general pulls strings to save the boy from prosecution. The general manages to pin the blame for the killing on a group of Russians, whereupon he gives the men under his command carte blanche to round up and execute as many innocent Russians as they wish. This act of brutality is contrasted with the pangs of guilt suffered by the son and his co-conspirators.

Manfred Falk is an experienced race car driver and member of a racing collective in Eisenach. While competing in West Germany, the beautiful Manuela convinces him to leave his girlfriend Inge and his friends at the collective behind in order to join the South American Alvarez racing company.

Drama about an impoverished family, a widowed mother and her two sons, trying to get by.

The two half-orphans Reni and Rolf are 13 and 10 years old and they live with their grandmother in Berlin. Their father has died during the war, their mother works at a Baltic Sea port. Here she meets a captain who wants to marry her. When their mother tells them about the planned wedding, Reni and Rolf are reluctant to meet the captain.

The soccer team of the company sports association "BSG Hartenfels" is going downhill. New training methods - based on scientific findings - are needed, says Paul Schmidt. But he runs up against the star striker Wieland, whose friends naturally stick by him. So water sportswoman Ruth, deputy chairwoman of the BSG, decides to use female cunning to change the situation for the better. She and her friends Lilo and Uschi want to "work" the unruly ones. In the end, there is indeed a victory - on the sports field - and two happy couples.