Roland Schafer Movies

A lonely man opens his heart to a troubled child with unfortunate results in this drama. Herbert (Burghart Klaussner) is a low-level German bureaucrat who works at the nation's embassy in Tbilisi, a city in the Republic of Georgia. Herbert is a loner with few friends, and the only local person he knows well is a co-worker (Marika Giorgobiani) who has been having an on-and-off affair with him, even though she's married. One day, Herbert is in the city market when a scruffy twelve-year-old girl (Lika Martinova) tries to steal his wallet; despite his initial anger, Herbert takes pity on the girl, and prevents her from being arrested. When Herbert learns the girl has no place to call home, he lets her stay at his flat for the night. While Herbert doesn't speak Georgian well and the girl doesn't speak German at all, the two strike up a wary friendship, and he develops a paternal affection towards the girl. But while Herbert and the girl brighten one another's lives, his lover is deeply disturbed when she discovers the girl is now living with him, and begins circulating a rumor that he's having inappropriate relations with the youngster. Der Mann von der Botschaft (aka The Man From The Embassy) received its North American premiere at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The US/German co-production The Rose Garden is based on an actual court case. Cast against type, Maximillian Schell plays a shabby old man who, without warning, attacks well-to-do Kurt Hubner at the Frankfurt airport. Hubner presses charges, and it looks like an open-and-shut case. But public-defender Liv Ullmann, who has witnessed the incident, is urged by her daughter to defend the poverty-stricken Schell in court. During her investigation, Ullman learns that Schell is a concentration-camp survivor who lost his sister to a hideous Nazi medical experiment, and that Hubner was commandant at the camp where this and other atrocities occurred. Hubner has been able to legally maneuver his way out of Germany, and was en route to parts unknown when Schell recognized him and attacked him. Even though she is armed with this information, Ullmann cannot be certain that justice will be served to the correct man. The Rose Garden is a provocative, compelling piece, deliberately and methodically raising more questions than can possibly be answered within its 112 minute running time. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi