Germany

Our film critic Justin Chang says that "Tar," which opens this week in theaters, is one of the most exciting new American movies he's seen this year.

For her second solo album, Kennedy's array of diverse songs — from thumping electronica to full-throated crooning — shows us she won't be pinned down

Historian David Nasaw tells the story of more than a million people stranded in defeated Nazi Germany after World War II. Some felt they couldn't return to their home countries under Soviet control. Others were Jewish survivors who had no homes to return to. Nasaw's book is 'The Last Million.'

In The Splendid And The Vile, author Erik Larson details the British prime minister's first year in office, during which England endured a Nazi bombing campaign that killed more than 44,000 civilians.

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's new film tells the story of an artist who grows up in Nazi Germany, comes of age in East Germany and travels to the West to find freedom for himself and his art.

The German film centers on a prankster father who barges into the life of his business consultant daughter. Critic David Edelstein says Toni Erdmann keeps you guessing — in a good way.

Susanna Moore tells the sage of an ambitious girl, a family's artistic fortune and a world at war. Young heroine Beatrice Palmer is whisked off to Berlin where she is put to work packing up priceless artwork in a wealthy family's mansion.

Hans Fallada's 1947 novel, Every Man Dies Alone, presents a memorable portrait of ordinary resistance to Nazism in wartime Germany.

From jazz concerts and cabaret acts to multimedia art installations, Theo Bleckmann has made a name for himself in new York. Now, the vocalist and composer looks back to his native Germany.

Editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe, Frederick Kempe. As a journalist, he's covered Germany for over twenty years, and is also the son of German immigrants. His new book "Father/land: A Personal Search for the New Germany" (Putnam) is his exploration into his family's past in Germany, and an analysis of Germany today.

Herzog's latest movie is a documentary, "Little Dieter Needs to Fly: Escape from Laos" the true story of Dieter Dengler, the only U.S. pilot to have sucessfully escaped from a North Vietnamese-controlled prison. Herzog's other works include the feature films "Aguirre: The Wrath of God," "Heart of Glass," "Fitzcarraldo," and "Nosferatu."

Ian Buruma has just written the book, "The Wages of Guilt," which explores the different ways in which the people of Germany and Japan remember World War II. He seeks to explain why Germany has a collective sense of guilt over its war crimes, while Japan tries to forget its involvement in the war. Buruma's other books include "God's Dust" and "Playing the Game."

Rock critic Ed Ward on the troubles of shopping in Berlin.

Rock Critic Ed Ward on encountering the hip new language in Berlin: English.

New York Times European diplomatic correspondent, Craig Whitney. Whitney is the author of a new book about espionage and spy swaps during the cold war in the two Germanys: "Spy Trader" (Times Books). Now living in Bonn, Whitney reports on the issues surrounding European unity: the rise of ethnic conflicts, and the crisis in Bosnia. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Investigative journalist Tom Powers has written a new book about the German attempt to get an atomic bomb, the threat that terrified American scientists and military during World War II. The book is "Heisenberg's War." At the center of the story is German physicist and Nobel laureate Werner Heisenberg. While other preeminent scientists left Germany with the rise of the Reich, Heinsenberg chose to stay to defend what was left of "good science." The program weapons program failed.

Documentary filmmaker Marcel Ophuls. He is best known for his 1970 work "The Sorrow and the Pity," about the conduct of the French people during the Holocaust. He also made the film "Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie." His latest work is about life behind the iron curtain and the changes underway in Europe since the fall of the Berlin wall.

German Film Director Volker Schlondorff. His films include "The Tin Drum," and as "The Handmaid's Tale." He's also directed for television: "Death of a Salesman," starring Dustin Hoffman and "A Gathering of Old Men." His new film is "Voyager," starring Sam Shepard. He talks with Terry about the new film as well as how life has changed for he and his friends since the reunification of Germany.

Writer and political essayist Peter Schneider. Schneider's new book, "The German Comedy: Scenes of Life After the Wall," looks at some of the ironic and funny results of the unification of the Germanys. (It's published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux).

German film director Volker Schlöndorff. He just finished the film adaptation of Margaret Atwood's best-selling novel, "The Handmaid's Tale." It stars Natasha Richardson, Faye Dunaway, Elizabeth McGovern, and Robert Duval. Schlondorf's other films include "The Tin Drum," which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, "The Lost Honor of Katherina Blum," and "Swann in Love."