The 8 best movies to learn German • Wanderlix

Make progress while entertaining you, thanks to our selection of the 8 best films to learn German!

Learning German is sometimes associated with a tedious task, assimilating complex grammar rules and learning a difficult vocabulary. Put aside your dictionary and course manuals and give yourself a well-deserved break! Are you a filmmaker? We offer you to join the appreciable by watching a film, while improving your level of German.

In addition to other learning methods, watching a movie in an original version is an opportunity to strengthen your language skills and expand your cultural knowledge. Comfortably installed in your armchair, you enrich your vocabulary and your level of oral, relaxed and effective understanding.

You are seduced by the idea of advancing in German, while releasing your Netflix subscription, but you lack inspiration? Wanderlix reveals its top 8 movies to learn German.

1. Good bye, Lenin!

The most of the film to learn German: Plebiscity around the world, Good Bye, Lenin is probably one of the most famous and popular German films in the world. The (re)see in original version is an excellent opportunity to focus on dialogues and familiarize yourself with many East German expressions of everyday life.

Summary of the film: In the late 1980s, Christiane lived with his family in East Berlin. A fervent partisan of the communist regime of the Democratic Republic of Germany (RDA), she is a victim of an infarction that plunges her into a deep coma. On his wake, the Berlin wall fell, causing major upheavals in Germany. Determined to make every effort to preserve the health of their mother, her children decide to hide the reality from her and try to recreate their old days.

The film discusses, on the tone of humour, the feeling of Ostalgia (the nostalgia of the GDR), which appeared in Germany after the fall of the wall, which still inspires many East Germans today.

2. Find Das Leben der Anderen La Vie des autres

The most of the film to learn German: In addition to enriching your everyday vocabulary of life, Das Leben der Anderen will allow you to work your oral understanding, pronunciation and intonation.

Summary of the film: 1984, East Berlin. Gerd Wiesler, a master emeritus of the Stasi (the East German political police), is responsible for investigating the playwright Georg Dreymann and his partner Christa-Maria Sieland, both suspected of not joining the party’s ideas. His convictions gradually collapse when he understands that he is manipulated by his hierarchy for personal purposes. His mission then took a different turn: to protect, in secret, the couple he was supposed to trap.

This poignant film, awarded by the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2007, highlights the monitoring practices of the population by the Stasi during the Cold War. It raises, on a larger scale, the question of the place of the Stasi in the East German collective memory.

3. Das Wunder von Bern

The most of the film to learn German: This film offers you the opportunity to discover a German spoken daily, in a family and sports context.

Summary of the film: In the summer of 1954, Richard Lubanski returned to his family in the Ruhr Basin, after ten years of captivity in the Soviet Union. Man, broken by war, struggles to find his place within his family and a society that he barely recognizes. The unexpected qualification of the German team in the final of the World Cup football suddenly changed the game.

It is a great opportunity for the Lubanski family, and for all the German people, to regain lost pride and collective identity. Das Wunder von Bern is an interesting basis for understanding the importance of football in German culture.

4. Die Welle La Vague

The most of the film to learn German: This film will allow you to assimilate a “young” language, quite familiar, and to enrich your vocabulary on topics such as education and politics.

Summary of the film: Rainer Wenger, an anarchist high school teacher, hosts an educational workshop on the theme of autocracy. He takes this opportunity to organize an experimental role game, whose aim is to demonstrate to his students that nothing is enough to make a group of individuals switch into an authoritarian regime.

Inspiring by real facts, which occurred in a Californian school in the late 1960s, Die Welle addressed the subject of Nazism and, more generally, the question of the risk of the reappearance of a self-crate regime in the near future.

5. Das weisse Band

The most of the film to learn German: Partially told in the form of a story, Das weisse Band is an excellent opportunity to (re)discover the narration times and their context of use in German (here present, imperfect and simple past).

Summary of the film: On the eve of the First World War, in a conservative village in northern Germany with peaceful appearances, the daily lives of the inhabitants are disturbed by a series of unexplained events. Tension is growing, while accidents are repeated and are increasingly similar to a punitive ritual. The intrigue of the film takes place in an atmosphere as striking as glazing.

The use of a clear and distinct language – almost literary – makes the understanding of this film, rewarded in Cannes by the Palme d’Or in 2009, almost clear, regardless of your level of German.

6. Keinohrhasen

The most of the film to learn German: This romantic comedy addresses as entertaining and varied subjects: the world of the press, love relations, friendship. You will learn many expressions, familiar and more supported, useful daily.

Summary of the film: Ludo Decker, journalist people in Berlin, leads a unscrupulous life, rhymed by the big headlines of the scandalous press and the nights without tomorrow with his countless conquests. His life shifts when, following his misfortune intrusion in a private celebrity party, he is sentenced to three hundred hours of general interest work in a daycare centre.

A true blockbuster in Germany, Keinorhasen is a must in German popular cinema culture.

7. Find The Wind of Liberty

The most of the film to learn German: Ballon is a good work to enrich your vocabulary, especially on the themes of escape, political persecution, doubt and hope.

Summary of the film: Inspired by a true story, the scenario is based on the incredible escape in 1979 of two families from East Germany to West Germany, aboard a balloon they built. The film, rich in nuances and emotions, depicts life in the GDR before the fall of the wall, with a haunting suspense.

Adapted to a wide audience, it is an excellent basis for reflection and discussion on the ideological opposition between the two Germanys and between the communist and capitalist blocs during the Cold War.

8. Der Untergang

The most of the film to learn German: Der Untergang will make you revise the vocabulary of war, predominant in the film, and will give you the opportunity to train your ear to understand different Germanic accents and dialects (such as the Austrian accent of Adolf Hitler).

Summary of the film: Berlin, spring 1945. The city is surrounded by allies, and the Nazi regime has its last moments. Recluse in a bunker, Adolf Hitler and his closest collaborators are witnessing the imminent fall of the Third Reich, in a state of mind mixing madness and up to standingism.

This fiction, which draws a part of his inspiration in The Last Days of Hitler by Joachim Fest, looks at one of the darkest pages in Germany’s history, with the look of a German director.