The best Stephan Schad’s movies

A young lawyer stumbles upon a vast conspiracy while investigating a brutal murder case.

The nine-year-old Nikolas has been missing for days. The criminal psychologist Claudia Meinert notices contradictions in her conversation with the parents of the missing child. In particular Nikolas' mother appears to be hiding something. When a video of the missing Nikolas surfaces, showing him tied up in a cellar, the trail leads to his school. The 13-year-old Leon and Mathilda strike the psychologist as conspicuous and provocative. Shortly afterwards, Meinert encounters the children with Nikolas' parents at the local swimming pool and her suspicions are confirmed: the parents are entangled in an insidious father-mother-child game with the possible suspects Leon and Mathilda. Now it is up to the psychologist to resolve the dark mystery of Nikolas' disappearance and save the child.

Alex, Fedja, Timo and Lara are four troubled teens for whom the upcoming Christmas eve isn't a time of peace and joy: Since they all have a history of escalating family conflicts, they'll be spending the holidays not at home, but in a psychiatric ward. The utterly different adolescents not only have to adjust to one another, but also have to confront themselves in exhausting therapy sessions. Yet thanks to the unorthodox psychiatrist Dr. Wolf, the sessions take a turn for the unexpected - and the four experience a Christmas which they will never forget.

This quiet comedy by screenwriter Arndt Stüwe - reminiscent in style and tone of Billy Wilders "The Apartment" - Rolf Schübel staged emotionally and attractively with Bernadette Heerwagen and Wotan Wilke Möhring: a heart-warming Christmas love.

Mervi is a gay girl living in the hipster quarters of Helsinki. She has been together with Kata for a year, and now they are encouraged by the circumstances to come out from closet. When they do, Mervi realises that she is not the only one in her family with secrets – her parents have been living in an open-bisexual-swinger-relationship for 20 years. On the other hand Kata is pretty surprised that she might be living with a hetero girl that once was dating a neo-nazi. And the ex-boy friend cannot swallow that Mervi is now with a person both of wrong color, and sex. The real threat appears when Kata’s parents arrive from Berlin and the local skinhead chief finds out that a black muslim celebrity politician has arrived to town.

Harriet Devonshire left school because of her unwed pregnancy and still lives with her dad Ronald. Only when he arranges for her teenage son Matthew to be enrolled in the same boarding school without consulting her, she leaves, only to find he obtains custody and she stands no chance of contesting it without a steady job. New York star photographer Leo Purbright takes her on as factotum, perhaps a shot at a real career, but his jealous assistant adds to the practical problems to square work with Matthew's present needs, miserable as bully Tommy's picked target.

For a long time, wealth adviser Elke and car mechanic Wastl were happy together. Until Elke gets involved more and more in dubious financial transactions that bring her success down the line. When her husband wants to stop these windy business, she separates from him. And goes even further - the accusation that her husband has beaten her, brings Wastl for a long time in a psychiatric hospital.

Some call it a men's holiday, the other flee from themselves: Thomas, Jens and Malte have rented a holiday home on a secluded Swedish lake - the complete contrast to life at home. They are only partially satisfied with that for different reasons. One is around 40, the first interim balance revealed weak points. But even in the Swedish forest, where there are at least one moose in addition to the free-running men, the guys catch up on the reality quickly. Because the wasteland is not as gullible as hoped ...

Patriarch and entrepreneur August Manzl is terminally ill. As his four grown-up children are all spoiled and sluggish, he comes up with a rather cynical idea to determine the future leader of the families empire: whoever of his children shows the courage and willpower to end his suffering within the next week will become the sole heir - and simultaneously proof the skills necessary to succeed in a modern business world. Between the children a murderous competition evolves.

Green meadows, blue sky in Swabia: Actually, the world of the two villages Oberrieslingen and Unterrieslingen should be in perfect order. But she is not. Why? Because the two hostile villages have had to share a church and a cemetery since the Middle Ages, which has caused squabbles and squalor to this day.