Sonja Ziemann talks about her career.

Vienna, 1956. After Soviet tanks crush the Hungarian uprising, soldier-of-fortune Michael Reynolds is hired to help a threatened Hungarian scientist escape from Budapest.

The film depicts the first month of 1945 when the Russian Red Army broke into the eastern part of Germany and forced millions of civilians to flee in the coldest of winter. While the Russians invaded Ostpreussen hundred of thousands of civilians were evacuated by ships. Gotenhafen was the last open port and ships left the town almost by the minute, overloaded by refugees. One of the last ships to leave Gotenhafen was the 'Wilhelm Gustloff', a former 'Kraft durch Freude' pleasure cruiser designed for 1000 passengers. Until today it is unknown how many people were on board but it is said to be around 10.000. The ship sunk without a trace and only a handful of people survived this hellish nightmare.

In the winter of 1943, against the background of battle scenes, a young German Lieutenant who increasingly distrusts the inhuman Nazi ideology struggles with the concept of war.

The film focuses on life in a World War II German penal battalion camp somewhere in Russia. The convicts include a heroic doctor unjustly convicted of avoiding military service, an officer who retreated against orders, and common criminals. It shows their life in the camp, clearing mines, living in trenches on the front line.

The vagabonds Tünnes, Nachtigall, and Hans come upon a small town during their travels, where they use the first unoccupied house they find as a place to sleep. When the homeowner, Georg Straaten, unexpectedly returns from a long journey, the vagabonds are relieved to find that they are not arrested, but instead hired as help at the inn run by the young Inge Bachner.

After the end of World War II Lüder Lüdersen, the former owner of a feudal estate in the East, and his daughter Helga arrive as refugees in the Lüneburg Heath. While living a seemingly happy life on the estate of his cousin, Lüdersen hides a dark secret: he is a poacher.

Juliane Thomas is an ambitious but unemployed young writer. After breaking up with her lover she works at a dentist friend to make ends meet. One day she instantly falls in love with one of the patients (Jean Berner) and promptly writes a movie script about the encounter in which she projects her own fantasies about how things will turn out eventually. By coincidence this movie script is picked up by a film director who happens to be Berner's closest friend and from then on things become very complicated...

The painter Hans Hauser falls head over heels in love with the "Black Forest girl" Bärbele Riederle. He travels to her home village and soon the two realize that they are made for each other.

On his journey through the Flemish province, Don Fernando, the king's stadtholder, passes through the small, bourgeois community of Terbrügg. There, he meets Antje, the mayor's wife. To impress the beautiful lady, he gives her his bathtub. It's a sensation in the small town, which has never seen such a tub before. Out of envy and resentment, Antje is pilloried for her "immoral" passion for bathing and becomes the laughingstock of the town...