Movies and TV: Blu-ray, DVD, Streaming

Related to Germany and German/European History

Feature films and TV shows related Germany and German history. For books, travel products and other store items, see the main page of the German Way Store.

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Hollywood Films | TV Shows

Streaming Movies and TV Series in German

Films and TV Series in German Amazon Prime Video (Free with Prime membership) and Netflix are good sources of programing in German (with English subtitles or closed captioning [CC must be turned on using the quote icon at the top of the video screen.]). Examples include: Babylon Berlin (Netflix series), Dark (Netflix series), Das Leben der Anderen, Lore (Netflix), Western, A Minute’s Silence (Schweigeminute, 2006), The Wave (Die Welle), and You Are Wanted (Amazon). More below.

Blu-ray Disc, HD Movies in German

Movies in German with English subtitles. Some of the films listed below are also available on Amazon Prime Video.

Note: Most Blu-ray discs have no region coding. Such discs will play on both European and US Blu-ray players. DVDs, however, are limited to a particular region, but can be played on multi-code DVD players. A Blu-ray disc will not play on a regular DVD player. DVD titles listed below are Region 1 (North America) unless noted otherwise.

For Blu-ray/4K discs sold and shipped by Amazon.de (in Germany), see Blu-ray/4K – Part 2 (Amazon.de).

Region Codes See Blu-ray and DVD Region Codes for detailed information about which code is where.

For more about players and region codes, see Region-Free Blu-ray/DVD Players and Multisystem TVs from Amazon, with our recommendations for expats.

Feature Films

Movies in German with English Subtitles
North American video system, Region A/1. Some Blu-rays will also play on European Blu-ray players. The Blu-ray and 4K/UHD discs below are sold and shipped by Amazon.com in the USA.

Never Look Away (Werk ohne Autor, 2018)
Blu-ray, DVD, Prime Video
Starring Tom Schilling, Sebastian Koch. Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others, The Tourist)
Sony Classics: “Inspired by real events and spanning three eras of German history, NEVER LOOK AWAY tells the story of a young art student, Kurt (Tom Schilling) who falls in love with fellow student, Ellie (Paula Beer). Ellie’s father, Professor Seeband (Sebastian Koch), a famous doctor, is dismayed at his daughter’s choice of boyfriend, and vows to destroy the relationship. What neither of them knows is that their lives are already connected through a terrible crime Seeband committed decades ago.”

The American Friend (1977)
Prime Video
Starring: Dennis Hopper, Bruno Ganz, Lisa Kreuzer
Amazon: “Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire; Paris, Texas) pays loving homage to rough-and-tumble Hollywood film noir with ‘The American Friend,’ a loose adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel Ripley’s Game. Dennis Hopper (Easy Rider) oozes quirky menace as an amoral American art dealer who entangles a terminally ill German everyman…”

Das Boot (Director’s Cut) (1982, Blu-ray 2012)
Blu-ray, DVD, Prime Video
Starring Jürgen Prochnow, Herbert Grönemeyer. Directed by Wolfgang Petersen (Independence Day)
With commentary with director Wolfgang Peterson

The Complete Metropolis (1927)
Blu-ray
Starring: Brigitte Helm, Alfred Abel. Directed and written by Fritz Lang
Limited Edition, Special – with 25 minutes of restored footage (2010) previously thought lost.
This true classic silent sci-fi film (with Gottfried Huppertz’ original score) has been remastered in hi-def video and audio. The film’s dazzling visual design and special effects shine like never before. This Blu-ray edition includes a 50-minute documentary on the making and restoration of the film.

Run Lola Run (Lola rennt
DVD or Blu-ray
Lola (Franka Potente) runs through the streets of Berlin — and to box-office records. A modern classic by director Tim Tykwer (Perfume).

Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary (Im toten Winkel, Amazon Prime Video, HD or SD)
From The New Yorker: “Traudl Junge started working for Hitler in 1942 when she was twenty-two years old. She took dictation and typed his private communiqués, and was one of the few people to survive the final days in the Berlin bunker. After the war, she kept herself and her story out of sight until two Austrian filmmakers, André Heller and Othmar Schmiderer, interviewed her … shortly before her death. The film is just Frau Junge and the camera, unadorned with newsreel footage, still photography, or even a fade. The starkness is deliberate…”

More Blu-ray movies below…

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Streaming Video: Films and TV Series

Below are some German-language films or TV series available from Amazon Prime Video – either free with Prime or for rent/purchase. Note that some items may only be available for a limited period of time. Here are some links to a few Amazon Prime productions in German:

Hotel Sacher
Amazon Prime Video – free with Prime
A soap-operatic mini-series about the history of Hotel Sacher in Vienna. Beginning with the takeover by Anna Sacher after her husband Eduard dies at age 59. Most of the time, someone high or low in society seems to be kissing in one of the chambres séparées. In German with English subtitles. (CC must be turned on using the quote icon at the top of the video screen, with “English” selected.)

You Are Wanted [English Subtitled] (Seasons 1 and 2)
Amazon Prime Video – free with Prime
Lukas Franke (Matthias Schweighöfer) finds himself a victim of a hacking attack, his online information altered to implicate him as having masterminded a cyber-attack on Berlin resulting in a city-wide blackout. Suspected as a terrorist, Lukas scrambles to find out why he’s been targeted, as even his family and friends begin to doubt his innocence. Also available in an English-dubbed version (but why would you watch that?).

Netflix
The following films and TV productions can be viewed on Netflix streaming (subscription required):
Babylon Berlin, Charité, Charité at War, Criminal – Germany, Dark, Dogs of Berlin, Look Who’s Back (2015), Right Here, Right Now; We Are the Wave, and 3 Türken und ein Baby. We highly recommend Babylon Berlin and Dark.

Also see:
• Streaming: German Series in the USA, and Where to Watch Them (Goethe Institute)
• Mobile Apps for Watching German-Language TV and Movies (German Way)

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More Blu-ray Movies

From the German Ufa Studios Silent Era

Faust MultiSet
Blu-ray/DVD
Starring: Emil Jannings, Gösta Ekman. Directed by F.W. Murnau
Amazon: Mobilizing the full resources of the Ufa Studios, F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu, Sunrise) orchestrated a colossal adaptation of Goethe’s FAUST that ranks alongside Fritz Lang’s Metropolis as the greatest achievements of the German silent cinema. Gösta Ekman stars as the titular alchemist who, struggling with his faith amidst a devastating plague, is offered the power to cure and the gift of youth… in exchange for his soul. As the diabolical Mephisto, Emil Jannings (The Last Laugh) delivers a performance of operatic intensity, by turns charming, comical and horrifying.
This special edition contains the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Stiftung’s meticulous HD restoration of the original German release version of the film, as well as a DVD of the lengthier alternate cut prepared by the Ufa Studios in 1930 for distribution in the U.S.

The Last Laugh
Blu-ray, DVD, Prime Video
Starring: Emil Jannings, Maly Delschaft. Directed by F.W. Murnau (Director)
Amazon: “One of the crowning achievements of the German expressionist movement, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s The Last Laugh (Der letzte Mann). Emil Jannings stars as an aging doorman whose happiness crumbles when he is relieved of the duties and uniform which had for years been the foundation of his happiness and pride. Through Jannings’s colossal performance, The Last Laugh becomes more than the plight of a single doorman, but a mournful dramatization of the frustration and anguish of the universal working class. Featuring a new musical score by the Berklee College of Music, as well as the original score by Giuseppe Becca, this is the definitive edition of the landmark classic, mastered from a 2K restoration by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung.
Special Features: 2K Restoration by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung | New musical score (2017) by the Berklee Silent Film Orchestra | Original 1924 score by Giuseppe Becce, orchestrated by Detlev Glanert (2003) | Audio commentary by film historian Noah Isenberg | The Last Laugh: The Making of, a 40-minute documentary | Bonus DVD featuring the unrestored export version with music by Timothy Brock, performed by the Olympia Chamber Orchestra

The Baader Meinhof Complex (Blu-ray, 2008)
This film about German home-grown terrorism in the 1970s and ’80s stars Martina Gedeck and Moritz Bleibtreu. Directed by Uli Edel. In German with English subtitles.

A Coffee in Berlin Amazon Prime Video (HD or SD)
A Coffee In Berlin is a love-letter to the city of Berlin and Generation Y, depicting a day-in-the-life of twenty-something law school dropout Niko, as he drifts through a series of absurd, funny and poignant encounters with the people around him. Starring: Tom Schilling, Katharina Schüttler.

The Counterfeiters (Die Fälscher)
From the Blu-ray back cover: “Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, The Counterfeiters tells the true story of Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), a swindler who made a name for himself as Berlin’s ‘King of the Counterfeiters.’ However, his life of women and easy money is cut short when he’s arrested and placed in a Nazi concentration camp. …Sorowitsch makes a sobering deal with his captors: in exchange for a comfortable bed, good food and fair treatment, Sorowitsch, along with the other hand-picked specialists, must counterfeit bank notes to fund the Nazi War effort. If he does as they say, he lives another day. If he rebels, he faces the same fate as the rest of the camp’s prisoners. But if he lives, will he be able to live with himself?” Rent or buy on Amazon Prime Video.

Downfall (Der Untergang, Blu-ray)
From Amazon: “The riveting subject of Downfall is nothing less than the disintegration of Adolf Hitler in mind, body, and soul. A 2005 Academy Award nominee for best foreign language film, this German historical drama stars Bruno Ganz (Wings of Desire) as Hitler, whose psychic meltdown is depicted in sobering detail, suggesting a fallen, pathetic dictator on the verge on insanity, resorting to suicide (along with Eva Braun and Joseph and Magda Goebbels) as his Nazi empire burns amidst chaos in mid-1945.” Also available on DVD.

Good Bye, Lenin! – Amazon Prime Video – rent or buy
A comedy about a family that tries to hide the fall of the Berlin Wall from their mother after she wakes up from a coma.

The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen, Blu-ray)
From Amazon: “Nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, this is a first-rate thriller that … opts for character development over car chases. The place is East Berlin, the year is 1984, and it all begins with a simple surveillance assignment: Capt. Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe in a restrained, yet deeply felt performance), a Stasi officer and a specialist in this kind of thing, has been assigned to keep an eye on Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch, Black Book), a respected playwright, and his actress girlfriend, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck, Mostly Martha).” Also available on DVD.

Mostly Martha (Bella Martha) Amazon Prime Video (rent or buy)
This “rich addition to the recent banquet of movies about food” is a love story set in a Hamburg restaurant. Stars Martina Gedeck (Das Leben der Anderen).

Nowhere in Africa (Nirgendwo in Afrika) Blu-ray
Winner of the Academy Award for best foreign film in 2002. The story of a Jewish family that flees the Nazis by going to live in South Africa.

Rosenstrasse (Amazon Prime Video)
Amazon: “In the cold Berlin winter of 1943, hundreds of women stood, and waited, in defiance of the Nazis. While countless Jews were being sent to concentration camps for execution, Jewish husbands of Aryan wives suffered a different fate; they were separated from their families and imprisoned in a factory on a street named Rosenstraße. On that street these women stood in protest, in the name of love until they were reunited with their men.”

Schindler’s List (Blu-ray, 4K)
Stephen Spielberg’s award-winning film about a man (Liam Neeson) who saved many Jews by hiring them to work in his porcelain factory in Poland.

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (DVD)
Amazon: “Through its simplicity and scrupulous attention to historical detail, Sophie Scholl: The Final Days proves to be both thrillingly suspenseful and emotionally devastating. During the peak of the Third Reich, Sophie Scholl (Julia Jentsch, The Edukators), along with her brother Hans and other students in Munich, formed a resistance group called the White Rose and distributed anti-Nazi leaflets. The tension only increases as they are arrested, interrogated, and swiftly convicted in a brutal show trial.”

Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin
Blu-ray/DVD, Prime Video
Starring: Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartin, Otto Sander
Wim Wenders’ 1987 classic divided-Berlin film looks great in HD! Wings of Desire is one of cinema’s loveliest city symphonies. Bruno Ganz is Damiel, an angel perched atop buildings high over Berlin who can hear the thoughts – fears, hopes, dreams – of all the people living below. But when he falls in love with a beautiful trapeze artist, he is willing to give up his immortality and come back to earth to be with her.

Region Codes See Blu-ray and DVD Region Codes for detailed information about which code is where.

Hollywood Movies with a German Connection

Movies shot on location in Germany/Europe or films made by German directors.

Paris, Texas
Blu-ray, Prime Video
This Wim Wenders’ classic, set in the USA, stars Harry Dean Stanton and Nastassja Kinski.
Amazon: Something like a perfect artistic union is achieved in the major components of Paris, Texas: the twang of Ry Cooder’s guitar, the lonely light of Robbie Muller’s camera, the craggy landscape of Harry Dean Stanton’s face. In his greatest role, longtime character actor Stanton plays a man brought back to his old life after wandering in the desert (or somewhere) for four years. He has a 7-year-old son to get to know, and his wife has gone missing. The material is much in the wanderlust spirit of director Wim Wenders, working from a script by Sam Shepard and L.M. Kit Carson. If the long climactic conversation between Stanton and Nastassja Kinski renders the movie uneven and slightly inscrutable, it’s hard to think of a more fitting ending–and besides, the achingly empty American spaces stick longer in the memory than the dialogue. Winner of the top prize at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival.

Bridge of Spies
Blu-Ray, DVD, Prime Video
Starring: Tom Hanks, Alan Alda. Directed by Steven Spielberg
A dramatic thriller set against the backdrop of a series of historic events, BRIDGE OF SPIES is “absolutely brilliant and totally riveting” (Bill Zwecker, Chicago Sun-Times). James Donovan (Tom Hanks) is a Brooklyn lawyer who finds himself thrust into the center of the Cold War when the CIA send him on a nearly impossible mission to negotiate the release of a captured American U-2 pilot. High stakes and suspense power a story that captures the essence of a man who risked everything, vividly bringing his personal journey to life. Filmed at the actual Glienicke Bridge and other locations in Germany.

The Monuments Men
Blu-Ray + DVD, Prime Video
Starring: George Clooney (Actor, Director, Producer), Matt Damon, Bill Murray, Cate Blanchett, John Goodman
Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, THE MONUMENTS MEN centers around an unlikely World War II platoon, tasked with going into Germany to rescue artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and returning them to their rightful owners. In a seemingly impossible mission, the Monuments Men, as they were called, find themselves risking their lives in a race against time to avoid the destruction of 1,000 years of culture.

The Grand Budapest Hotel
Blu-Ray + DVD, Prime Video
A whimsical, very funny film shot on location in Germany (by director Wes Anderson) and at Berlin’s Studio Babelsberg. Features a cast of great actors, including Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham, Mathieu Amalric, Adrien Brody, Bill Murray and Willem Dafoe.

The Reader
Blu-Ray, DVD, Prime Video
Amazon: “…sorrowful and shocking, yet leavened by a deep love story that is its heart. In postwar Germany, young schoolboy Michael (German actor David Cross) meets and begins a tender romance with the older, mysterious Hanna (Kate Winslet, whose performance is a revelation). The two make love hungrily in Hanna’s shabby apartment, yet their true intimacy comes as Michael reads aloud to Hanna in bed, from his school assignments, textbooks, even comic books.” Based on the German novel DER VORLESER by Bernhard Schlink. Filmed in Germany.

The Third Man (1950) Amazon Prime Video (HD or SD)
Filmed in Vienna. American writer Holly Martins arrives in post-war Vienna to visit his old friend Harry Lime. On arrival, he learns that his friend has been killed in a street accident, but also that Lime was a black marketer wanted by the police. Starring: Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard, Alida Valli.

Hangmen Also Die (1943) Amazon Prime Video (HD or SD)
Directed by Austrian-born Fritz Lang, beautifully shot by James Wong Howe, and tightly scripted by Bertolt Brecht and Lang in their only collaboration, this noir-like espionage thriller is set in occupied Czechoslovakia and revolves around the successful plot by the Czech resistance to assassinate Deputy Reich-Protector of Bohemia and Moravia “Hangman” Reinhard Heydrich and the hunt by the Gestapo to track down the killers.

Also see Region 2/B DVDs and Blu-ray Discs from the German Way.

Television Shows (Amazon Prime Streaming)

Note: Amazon Prime Video may or may not be available in your country. Episodes of “House Hunters International” cost $2.99 per HD episode ($1.99 for SD) or $19.99 to $29.99 per season (14-25 episodes). Below we list some more recent episodes for locations in German-speaking Europe.

House Hunters International: Best of Germany (HD)
This special house hunting collection takes you to Berlin, Cologne, and Dortmund. Episode 3 (“Back to Berlin”) features German Way blogger Erin and her husband.
Special: 11 Episodes – Buy single episodes or all 11 for $14.99.

Continued below…

Amazon Prime Video Find your favorite TV series and movies from Amazon, CBS, HBO, STARZ, and other providers. Some are even in German (with English subtitles): Hotel Sacher (ORF/ZDF; turn on English closed captioning) and You Are Wanted (2 seasons) – free with Prime

House Hunters International: Baby or Bust in Vienna (HD)
A student couple attempts to find an apartment in Vienna, Austria.
Season 137, Episode 14 (scroll down page to No. 14)

House Hunters International: Out of Debt and Off to Vienna (HD)
A recently debt-free young woman wants a dog-friendly apartment in Vienna, Austria.
Season 136, Episode 19 (scroll down page to No. 19)

House Hunters International: Hello Aachen, Germany (HD)
A young couple looks for their first place together in Aachen, Germany.
Season 136, Episode 8 (scroll down page to No. 8)

House Hunters International: Disco vs. Diapers in Zurich (HD)
A couple faces change on all fronts after moving from Hong Kong to Zurich.
Season 134, Episode 5 (scroll down page to No. 5)

House Hunters International: A Fresh Start in Germany (HD)
A globetrotter makes the move from the States to Regensburg, Germany.
Season 132, Episode 2 (scroll down page to No. 2)

House Hunters International: Fashionably Zurich (HD)
An Estonia family follows a job to the serene Swiss countryside.
Season 132, Episode 9 (scroll down page to No. 9)

Next | Blu-ray/4K – Part 2 (Amazon.de)
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Related Pages
AT THE GERMAN WAY

• Blu-ray and DVD Region Codes – A guide to which codes work in which regions – and why we have region codes at all
• Region-Free Blu-ray/DVD Players and Multisystem TVs – Code-free, international players and TVs
• Region 2/B DVDs and Blu-ray Discs from the German Way Store and Amazon.de
• The German Way Store – Books, DVDs, travel items and more for expats or travelers in German-speaking Europe.
• The German Way Expat Blog discusses issues of interest to expats in German-speaking Europe.
• Expat Repatriation – Re-entry or moving on when the assignment’s over
• The German Way Expat Forum – Join our forum, where we share info and tips about life in German Europe.