Germany has a rich and storied film history, over the years producing such directing heavyweights as Fritz Lang, Wim Wenders, Rainer Maria Fassbinder, and Werner Herzog, and actors like Marlene Dietrich, Peter Lorre, Klaus Kinski, and Bruno Ganz. Highly influential films have been coming out of Germany since the 19th century, fromThe Cabinet of Dr. CaligariandNosferatutoRun, Lola, RunandGoodbye, Lenin!
This year particularly has been a big one for German cinema internationally, withAll Quiet on the Western Frontgarnering universal acclaim for its timeliness and relevance, a heart-wrenching retelling of Erich Maria Remarque’s classic anti-war novel. We’re going to delve a little farther in, with this list of the ten best German films of the past decade.
10Victoria (2015)
Sebastian Schipper’s 2015 crime thriller would be enjoyable enough on its own, but Schipper upped the stakes with a daring move that few feature filmmakers have attempted: the entire 138-minute filmconsists of only one take. Spanish actress Laia Costa plays Victoria, a recent transplant to Berlin who doesn’t really speak the language, and leads a lonely existence working in a café. Out dancing one night, she makes her first friends, four thuggish young men that she gets drunk and high with, and they make plans to meet up again the next night.
That’s when she finds out that one of the men is in debt to a gangster, and they are all unwittingly roped into committing a bank heist, and the film kicks into high gear. The audacious premise was hard to sell investors on, and Schipper had to promise he would also complete a traditionally shot and edited version. Thankfully for audiences, Plan A turned out just fine.
Related:Great Movies That Were FIlmed in One Take, Or Look Like They Were
9The People vs. Fritz Bauer (2015)
Germany as a nation still must reckon with its starring role in the WWII atrocities that forever changed the world, and this reckoning is often evident in its cinema. This 2015 drama is about the Jewish judge and prosecutor who was a lead player in the arrest of Holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann. Bauer is played with aplomb by Burghart Klaußner, trying to figure out how to extradite Eichmann from Argentina, which would involve the extra-judicial involvement of Israel’s spy service, the Mossad. Bauer is stymied at every move by a German government still rife with former Nazis, who use the knowledge of Bauer’s homosexuality against him. But his persistence eventually leads to Eichmann’s capture and the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials in the 1960s.
Related:Best German War Movies of All Time
8Labyrinth of Lies (2014)
In another look into Germany’s difficult past, this 2014 drama touches on the same events asThe People vs. Fritz Bauer, retracing the 1950s, when former Nazis still filled the government, and men like Eichmann and Josef Mengele were still living abroad, consequence-free. Alexander Fehling is Johann Radmann, an earnest young public prosecutor eager to track down and hold accountable those Nazis still leading normal lives, but finding himself stymied by higher-ups at every move. It’s a more personal story perhaps thanFritz Bauer, as Radmann makes the horrific discovery that his father was a member of the Nazi party, tearing apart both his personal and professional lives. It’s still a pertinent message today, withRotten Tomatoescommenting, “Labyrinth of Liesartfully blends fact with well-intentioned fiction to offer a thought-provoking look at how the lessons of history can be easily lost or forgotten.”
7Transit (2018)
Christian Petzold is simply one of the best German directorsworking today (seePhoenix, below), and his work onTransitis no exception. Petzold took Anna Segher’s 1944 novel and set it in present-day Paris, which here is an occupied state. It’s the story of Georg, a German political refugee desperate to flee to Marseilles, who steals the documents of a dead writer, intending to turn them over. But instead he assumes the writer’s identity, inconveniently falling for the writer’s wife along the way. It’s a timely film about identity, fascism, and love, and the entanglements that ensue.
6Enfant Terrible (2020)
Rainer Maria Fassbinder was one of Germany’s most talented filmmakers, the genius behind groundbreaking 1970s films likeAli: Fear Eats the Soul,The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, andThe Marriage of Maria Braun, along with a miniseries adaptation ofBerlin Alexanderplatz, one of Germany’s most famous novels. This2020 biopicabout his short life (he died of a drug overdose at the age of 37) is directed by Oskar Roehler and examines the wildly prolific (he released between two and five feature films per year) career and hedonistic lifestyle. The film makes no bones about the fact that Fassbinder (played by Oliver Masucci) was an incredibly difficult person, and should be congratulated for trying to portray the myriad contradictions behind the influential genius.
5The Trouble with Being Born (2020)
Rather than delving into the past, this 2020 science fiction drama looks to the future, and portrays the relationshipbetween an android and her owner. The twist is that the android (also a sex doll) looks like a child, and her owner purchased her because she reminds him of his long-lost daughter. The film has garnered equal parts acclaim and controversy, prompting a number of walkouts at the 70th Berlin International Film Festival. It’s dystopian, it’s upsetting, but as we head ever faster towards a future in which we share space with robots, not as irrelevant as we might like to think.
4Western (2017)
You aren’t necessarily expecting a neo-Western when you sit down to this 2017 German film, but it’s one of thefinest of recent memory. Starring first-time actor Meinhard Neumann, it’s the third film directed by the talented Valeska Grisebach, and the story of Meinhard, a quiet loner of a construction worker on a site in Bulgaria, building a hydroelectric water plant, where he not only doesn’t fit in with his colleagues, there is a language barrier with the villagers. The other construction workers are a fairly toxic bunch, and Meinhard finds himself more at ease with the villagers he can’t talk to than his countrymen, who seem to be jeopardizing the villagers as well as their own work. There’s a quiet serenity to the movie that also crackles with an air of tension, making for hypnotic viewing.
3Toni Erdmann (2016)
For a film calledToni Erdmann, it’s interesting to note that there is no Toni Erdmann. There is Winfried (Peter Simonishek), a German music teacher who loves nothing more than playing extensive pranks on people. Lonely after a divorce and the death of his dog, Winfried goes to see his daughter Ines (Sandra Hüller) who lives in Bucharest, without invitation or warning. Ines, a driven consultant, has little time or patience for her father, who quickly runs out of ideas to persuade her to see him. In a last-ditch effort, he becomes “Toni Erdmann”, a life coach in a wig and fake teeth, and somehow, Ines starts to play along with the idea.
Towards the end of the film, Ines’ ambitions seem to overwhelm her, and she impulsively resorts to a prank reminiscent of one of her father’s, and as she welcomes guests to a business meeting at her apartment, announces that it is to be a naked brunch, causing a wide range of reactions. It’s a lovely comic drama, a reminder that sometimes the things we rail against in our families are exactly the things that we need.
2Phoenix (2014)
Christian Petzold (seeTransit, above) delivers another stunner with 2014’s mysterious tale of Nelly (the luminous Nina Hoss), a one-time cabaret singer damaged physically and emotionally by the Holocaust. After undergoing disappointing plastic surgery to mask a bullet wound to her face, she wants to see her husband once more before she and a friend leave for Israel. The friend has warned her that her husband Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld) was responsible for betraying her hiding place to the Nazis, which Nelly doesn’t believe, but when she tracks him down, he doesn’t recognize her, just saying that she strongly resembles his late wife.
He hatches a plan to pretend that sheisNelly, leaving her in the uncomfortable position of having to imitate herself. It’s a tense and wrenching film, and Hoss is simply brilliant as a woman who knows she can’t have her old life back, while wondering how much of it was a lie.
1All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)
Edward Berger’s 2022 epic breathed new life into the war epic (previous adaptations of the book were filmed in 1930 and 1979), winning awards wherever it was screened. Felix Kammerer and Albrecht Schuch are Paul and Kat, soldiers quickly disillusioned by the realities of war in 1917. It’s brutal in its depictions of the violence, degradation, and deprivations suffered by young men who enlisted, swayed by idealistic promises from the men who make the decisions. Just like Remarque’s timeless anti-war classic, it’s relentless in its indictment of war and the men who make it. There are a number of ways in which it deviates from the 1929 novel, but it absolutely holds true to its spirit.
