In this year's pre-Christmas season, two witty everyday heroes play the leading role. In the satire "Der Held vom Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse", Charly Hübner is hyped up by the media as an escape helper. On the other hand, Eva Victor stages herself as the victim of a sexual assault in "Sorry, Baby", but then deals with it in a far more black-humoured way than one would expect with the subject matter. A hero in a category of his own is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who is honoured with an opulent memorial on Sky/Wow in the five-part series "Amadeus".
© X Verleih AG
Video shop owner Michael Hartung is a real hero. As a young pointsman for the Reichsbahn railway, he helped 127 GDR citizens to escape in the 1980s. 35 years later, a resourceful magazine reporter wants to make him the cover hero. Unfortunately, the whole affair was a mishap that Michael would rather forget. If it weren't for the fat fee... Pompous heroism meets freely fabricated "facts". "Der Held vom Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse" is bursting with big stars in bizarre roles, trenchant sayings in weird situations and humanity in East and West.
© X Verleih AG Frederic Batier
In December 2024, the German film industry is deeply affected by the news of Wolfgang Becker's death. Born in Hemer in 1954, the director wrote film history in 2003 with "Good Bye, Lenin!" In 2003 and also gave Daniel Brühl's career a decisive boost, as he had previously done with "Das Leben ist eine Baustelle" (1997), which launched the careers of Jürgen Vogel and Christiane Paul. in 1994, Becker founded the production company X Filme together with directors Tom Tykwer and Dani Levy and producer Stefan Arndt (including "The White Ribbon" in 2009, "Babylon Berlin" in 2017 and "The Kangaroo Conspiracy" in 2022).
Film genre: Tragicomedy
Length: 112 minutes
Director: Wolfgang Becker
With: Charly Hübner, Christiane Paul, Leon Ullrich, Leonie Benesch, Thorsten Merten
Age rating: o.A.
Distributed by: X Verleih
Start: 11.12.2025
© A24
Since David Mamet's "Oleanna" (1994), the abuse of power in academia has been an acute topic in cinema. It is about misunderstandings and assaults, violence and guilt. Eva Victor has all of this in mind as the lead actor and director of her feature film debut. In "Sorry, Baby", the whole issue of hysteria in the academic environment is dealt with before it has even begun. What remains is the abuse that the student Agnes has to deal with. Her dry-as-dust gallows humour is the means to an end.
© A24
Eva Victor was born in Paris in 1994, but the family soon moved to San Francisco. After studying acting at Northwestern University, Eva Victor first became an editor at the feminist satire website "Reductress" and was discovered for the series "Billions" in 2020. Eva Victor is honoured with the Waldo Salt Screenplay Award at this year's Sundance Film Festival for her directorial debut "Sorry, Baby". Eva Victor identifies as non-binary.
Film genre: Tragicomedy
Length: 104 minutes
Director: Eva Victor
With: Eva Victor, Naomi Ackie, Lucas Hedges, John Carroll Lynch, Louis Cancelmi
Age rating: 16+
Distributed by: DCM Filmdistribution
Start: 18.12.2025
© Sky/Wow
Nothing has contributed more to Mozart's reputation as an eccentric than the 1979 theatre play "Amadeus", and the film adaptation by director Milos Forman, which won eight Oscars in 1985, is considered a masterpiece. The bar is therefore set high, but is easily surpassed by British series creator Joe Barton ("Duty and Dishonour", 2019), who was allowed to spread the competition between star composer Mozart and court conductor Salieri over five one-hour episodes. In the title role, Will Sharpe stirs up Viennese society. His sinister adversary, shaken by envy and admiration, is played by Paul Bettany ("WandaVision", 2021).
Genre: Drama Biography
Length: approx. 300 min
Developer: Joe Barton
With: Will Sharpe, Paul Bettany, Gabrielle Creevy, Rory Kinnear, Lucy Cohu
Age rating: n/a
Channel: Sky/ Wow
From: December 2025
Back then, when floppy disc drives still purred cosily and uploads and downloads took an eternity, mini-games such as "Minesweeper", "Moorhuhn" and "Snowcraft" were booming. Developed in 1998 by Nicholson NY in New York, the whimsical fastball battle between green and red anorak men was sent from office to office as a Christmas greeting. Initially in the USA, but also in Europe in the early 2000s, mainly to cheer up the snowless winter months. Snowcraft" is now available again free of charge on the download pages of the computer magazine Chip.
Type: Minigame, Skill
Developer: Nicholson NY
Accessible via: any browser
Address: chip.de/downloads/Snowcraft_12991366.html
