Simon Schwarz Movies

A handful of men set aside their differences to conquer one of Europe's tallest mountains in this period drama inspired by a true story. In 1936, Nazi Germany is looking to shore up its reputation in the eyes of the world, and after a pair of German climbers dies in an effort to climb the North face of the Eiger in the Swiss Alps, the state is looking to find another group who can succeed where the earlier team failed. Henry Arau (Ulrich Tukur), the publisher of one of Berlin's biggest newspapers, is a loyal son of the Third Reich, and when his editorial secretary, Luise Fellner (Johanna Wokalek), tells him she knows some climbers who would be willing to take on the Eiger, Tukur gives her a free hand to assemble a team and make this dream a reality. Close friends Toni Kurz (Benno Fürmann) and Andi Hinterstoisser (Florian Lukas) are serving in the German army when Fellner (who once dated Kurz) tries to persuade them to climb the Eiger. While Hinterstoisser is willing to take the risk in the name of patriotism, Kurz is cynical about the Third Reich and says he'll put his life on the line only for his own reasons and not to please Germany's leaders. Kurz and Hinterstoisser finally begin the climb in mid-summer, only to discover that a pair of Austrians, Willy Angerer (Simon Schwarz) and Edi Rainer (Georg Friedrich), are now challenging them in a race to the top. Nordwand (aka North Face) was an official selection at the 2008 Locarno Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

An Austrian housewife discovers a new hobby that's fun, profitable, and lethal in this black comedy. Sixty-ish Trixi (Christiane Hoerbiger) is hardly an ordinary grandmother; she's grown bored with her longtime marriage to loutish Siggi (Klaus Ofczarek), and as a diversion, uses her grocery allowance to gamble. One of Siggi's friends, Karli (Peter Faerber), spies her at the racetrack, and threatens to tell her husband about her hobby; to his surprise, Trixi offers to have sex with him in exchange for his silence. Karli lets slip with a little secret about Siggi -- he has a secret fund of $70,000 that he's been saving without her knowledge. Trixi, already unhappy with her mate, decides this is the last straw, and poisons him in order to get her hands on the money. But Trixi later discovers that Siggi's hidden bankroll was much smaller than Karli had led her to believe, and when a widower asks Trixi for her hand in marriage, she accepts. After locating his nest egg, Trixi soon does away with husband number two, and is prepared to move on to husband number three, good-looking Ulrich (Jan Niklas), when fate throws a few spanners into the works -- Karli begins demanding money to keep quiet about Siggi's "mysterious" death, and Trixi finds she has attracted the attention of Julius (Udo Kier), an artist with a taste for rough sex. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A determined medical student uncovers shady goings on during a prestigious summer anatomy course in this German thriller. When Paula Henning (Run Lola Run's Franka Potente) learns that she's been accepted to a highly competitive internship at a Heidelberg research institution, she's ecstatic. The daughter of a simple family doctor, she prefers to model herself after her terminally ill grandfather, who was once dean of the same Heidelberg university. Stern lecturer Prof. Grombek (Traugott Buhre) promises that half the students won't be around when the course ends; his prediction turns out to be true, but it's not because of the brutal exams. It seems that a group of renegade doctors is performing dissections on unwilling, still-living victims, which helps explain the artful laboratory in which plasticized human remains are lovingly displayed. Paula stumbles onto this plot when a recent acquaintance turns up on her dissection table, his blood the consistency of rubber. Studious to the extreme, Paula investigates his death with scientific determination -- despite the flirtations of handsome fellow student Caspar (Sebastian Blomberg) and the feel-good urgings of Gretchen (Anna Loos), her sexually promiscuous but utterly brilliant roommate. Just as Paula is preparing to expose the existence of the Anti-Hippocratic Society, a Nazi-affiliated group of medical malcontents, Gretchen falls prey to their extreme methods. Soon Paula, too, is in danger of becoming just another addition to the display case. Extremely popular in its native country, Anatomie was dubbed into English for American release under the title Anatomy. A sequel was in production as of 2002. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi