Louis van Beethoven (2020)

 

Eight-year-old Louis van Beethoven grew up in the provincial Bonn and is considered a musical prodigy; the singer and actor Tobias Pfeiffer and the Bonn court organist Christian Gottlob Neefe take care of the young genius.

Well-produced, but very superficial and rather crude bio-pic flips around in the musician's life, but hardly gives an accurate impression of the man and his music. 

Dreigroschenfilm (2018)

Against many odds, Bertolt Brecht's "The Threepenny Opera" becomes a phenomenal success: the film industry picks up the scent and seeks to make the master direct a film version of his play.

Superior German production tries to do justice to Bertolt Brecht and his work with a complex narrative structure, atmospheric dramatization and musical passages.

Das finstere Tal (2014)

Through a hidden path a lone rider reaches a little town high up in the Alps. Nobody knows where the stranger comes from, nor what he wants there. But everyone knows that they don't want him to stay.

Surprisingly accomplished period tale, excellently styled and photographed as a modern-day Spaghetti Western in the cold mountains of the Alps, with a capable cast; one would wish there were more such assured cinemtic productions from Austria and Germany.

Luis Trenker. Der Schmale Grat der Wahrheit (2015)

While forging and trying to sell Eva Braun's diaries after WWII the South Tyrol filmmaker Luis Trenker looks back to his career within the Third Reich period.

Mildly entertaining TV satire about a controversial celebrity (who remained very popular in post-war Germany) that is suprisingly accurate concerning facts, but the result portraits a more sinister Leni Riefenstahl than the title figure; neverthless, Tobias is great as the rogue Luis Trenker.