Karin Kienzler, Helga Bender, Otto Henn, Marita Breuer, Mathias Kniesbeck, Gabriele Blum, Jörg Hube, Marliese Assmann, Willi Burger, Gertrud Bredel, Michael Kausch, Eva Maria Bayerwaltes, Peter Harting

Highly acclaimed eleven-part series directed by Edgar Reitz, originally produced for German television over a two-year period at the beginning of the 1980s. The series chronicles over 60 years of turbulent German history from 1919 to 1982, including the economic meltdown that followed World War 1, the rise and fall of the Nazis and World War 2, and the subsequent rebuilding of Germany in two halves, East and West. The tale unfolds in a small fictional rural village and follows the fortunes of a woman called Maria (Marita Breuer) who at the start of the series is a young girl, and by the end is an old woman who has lived to tell the tale of some of history's harshest moments. The series won the International Critics' Prize at the 1984 Venice Film Festival.