Backdrop fallback

The Tunnel

The Tunnel

Share

The Tunnel

2001

2h 30m

7.2(118 votes)

Drama

Thriller

Overview

Inspired by true events, Olympic swimmer Harry Melchior defects from East Germany in the 1960s and hatches a daring plot to help his sister and others flee East Berlin through a 145-yard underground tunnel.

Links & Resources

Social & External

Production Companies

Sat.1

The people behind it

Cast & crew

10 featured cast members

Starring

Heino Ferch

Heino Ferch

Harry Melchior

Nicolette Krebitz

Nicolette Krebitz

Friederike " Fritzi " Scholz

Sebastian Koch

Sebastian Koch

Matthis Hiller

Alexandra Maria Lara

Alexandra Maria Lara

Lotte Lohmann

Claudia Michelsen

Claudia Michelsen

Carola Hiller

Felix Eitner

Felix Eitner

Fred von Klausnitz

Mehmet Kurtuluş

Mehmet Kurtuluş

Vittorio Castanza

Heinrich Schmieder

Heinrich Schmieder

Theo Lohmann

Uwe Kockisch

Uwe Kockisch

Oberst Krüger

Karin Baal

Karin Baal

Marianne von Krausnitz

Creative team

Directed by: Roland Suso Richter
Written by: Johannes W. Betz
Produced by: Nico Hofmann
Ariane Krampe

Similar Movies

Snowflake

Snowflake

Hunting down the murderer of their families in an anarchic Berlin of the near future, the outlaws Tan and Javid find themselves trapped in the wicked fairytale of a mysterious screenplay that entangles them in a vicious circle of revenge – apparently all written by a clueless dentist.

Berlin Syndrome

Berlin Syndrome

A passionate holiday romance leads to an obsessive relationship when an Australian photojournalist wakes one morning in an abandoned Berlin apartment and is unable to leave.

Yellow

Yellow

A reclusive man is on the hunt for a vicious serial killer in neon-lit Berlin.

The Escape

The Escape

A man is offered the chance to escape to his perfect dream world - all he has to do is hand over everything he owns. Will he really abandon his family? The answer to this question asks us to consider what really matters in our lives.

Kohinoor

Kohinoor

Haider plans to loot diamonds from the Kohinoor store and seeks Nicholas and Freddy's help. But Nicholas hires two small-time thieves, Louis and Aandikunju, so that he can claim the booty for himself.

Be Damned, America

Be Damned, America

A three-part anthology film. Story 1: A released convict traces his girlfriend and other people who were responsible for his imprisonment. Story 2: A factory worker Pantic comes to Belgrade where he befriends a waiter. Having no overnight lodge, Pantic spends the night in the bar where his new acquaintance works, and becomes a victim of group of people who start picking on him. The initially protective waiter joins their harassment, and that's when Pantic pulls out a knife. Story 3: A female reporter gets back from the province without getting job done. On her way back, she meets an abused woman who lives with her husband in a trailer, making grill. The two will run away together, facing many hazards and trials.

The Beniker Gang

The Beniker Gang

When his younger friends go up for adoption, threatening their extended family, an orphaned teen helps them discourage potential parents.

Cool Hand Luke

Cool Hand Luke

When petty criminal Luke Jackson is sentenced to two years in a Florida prison farm, he doesn't play by the rules of either the sadistic warden or the yard's resident heavy, Dragline, who ends up admiring the new guy's unbreakable will. Luke's bravado, even in the face of repeated stints in the prison's dreaded solitary confinement cell, "the box," make him a rebel hero to his fellow convicts and a thorn in the side of the prison officers.

The Pride of the Firm

The Pride of the Firm

Der Stolz der Firma, meaning The Pride of the Business, is a classic German silent film from 1914. The film tells the story of a shrewd apprentice and is filmed in the comical style of director Lubitsch. This is one of the few Lubitsch films from World War I that wasn’t lost.

Mission: Impossible III

Mission: Impossible III

Retired from active duty, and training recruits for the Impossible Mission Force, agent Ethan Hunt faces the toughest foe of his career: Owen Davian, an international broker of arms and information, who's as cunning as he is ruthless. Davian emerges to threaten Hunt and all that he holds dear – including the woman Hunt loves.

The Great Love

The Great Love

The attractive Oberleutnant Paul Wendlandt is stationed in North Africa as a fighter pilot. While in Berlin to deliver a report he is given a day's leave, and on the stage of the cabaret theatre "Skala" sees the popular Danish singer Hanna Holberg. For Paul it is love at first sight. When Hanna visits friends after the end of the performance, he follows her, and speaks to her in the U-Bahn. After the party in her friends' flat, he accompanies her home and chance throws them further together when an air raid warning forces them to take cover in the air raid shelter. Hanna reciprocates Paul's feelings, but after a night spent together Paul has to return immediately to the front. There now follows a whole series of misunderstandings, and one missed opportunity after another. While Hanna waits in vain for some sign of life from Paul, he is flying on missions in North Africa. When he tries to visit her in her Berlin flat, she is giving a Christmas concert in Paris.

The Murderers Are Among Us

The Murderers Are Among Us

After returning from a concentration camp, Susanne finds a traumatized ex-soldier living in her apartment in bombed out Berlin. Together the two try to move past their experiences during WWII.

Ghosts

Ghosts

Nina, a mentally ill teenage orphan, starts a new job as a garden cleaner when she meets Toni. They fall in love but soon Toni starts betraying Nina. Meanwhile, Francoise is picked up at a Berlin psychiatric hospital by her husband, Pierre. After spotting Nina, Francoise believes that she has found her kidnapped daughter Marie, but no one believes her.

The Good Shepherd

The Good Shepherd

Edward Wilson, the only witness to his father's suicide and member of the Skull and Bones Society while a student at Yale, is a morally upright young man who values honor and discretion, qualities that help him to be recruited for a career in the newly founded OSS. His dedication to his work does not come without a price though, leading him to sacrifice his ideals and eventually his family.

Late Night Repairs

Late Night Repairs

A hitman for the mafia is tasked with killing a new target, however the task proves to be difficult due to unforeseen reasons.

The Coast Guard

The Coast Guard

A member of Coast Guard Platoon 23, Private Kang monitors a high-infiltration stretch of beach lined with barbed-wire fencing. Driven by the belief that killing a spy is the highest honor, he waits for a chance to prove his worth.

No Songs of Love

No Songs of Love

As Tobias, a young director, supposes that his girl-friend Ellen had an affair with his brother Markus, front man of "Hansen", one year ago, he decides to shoot a documentary about the band's next tour. When Ellen joins the project, everybody's emotions boil over, although they are observed all the time.

Down by Law

Down by Law

A disc jockey, a pimp and an Italian tourist escape from jail in New Orleans.

23

The movie's plot is based on the true story of a group of young computer hackers from Hannover, Germany. In the late 1980s the orphaned Karl Koch invests his heritage in a flat and a home computer. At first he dials up to bulletin boards to discuss conspiracy theories inspired by his favorite novel, R.A. Wilson's "Illuminatus", but soon he and his friend David start breaking into government and military computers. Pepe, one of Karl's rather criminal acquaintances senses that there is money in computer cracking - he travels to east Berlin and tries to contact the KGB.

Learning to Lie

Learning to Lie

18-year-old school boy Helmut falls in love with fellow pupil Britta. He starts working for a Peace movement to get to know Britta. Britta, however, suddenly moves to San Francisco to live with her father and whilst there, finds a new boyfriend. Helmut studies, literature and politics in his home town and have a relationship with another girl from his former school, now studying medicine at the same university but they break up after having an affair with her roommate. Helmut begins a lot of short affairs with different women but still searches for his first girl.

Recommended Movies

Balloon

Balloon

Two families attempt a daredevil plan to escape the GDR with a homemade hot air balloon, but it crashes just before the border. The Stasi finds traces of this attempt to escape and immediately starts investigations, while the two families are forced to build a new escape balloon. With each passing day the Stasi is closer on their heels – a nerve-wracking race against time begins.

Funeral in Berlin

Funeral in Berlin

Colonel Stok, a Soviet intelligence officer responsible for security at the Berlin Wall, appears to want to defect but the evidence is contradictory. Stok wants the British to handle his defection and asks for one of their agents, Harry Palmer, to smuggle him out of East Germany.

Alone in Berlin

Alone in Berlin

Berlin in June of 1940. While Nazi propaganda celebrates the regime’s victory over France, a kitchen-cum-living room in Prenzlauer Berg is filled with grief. Anna and Otto Quangel’s son has been killed at the front. This working class couple had long believed in the ‘Führer’ and followed him willingly, but now they realise that his promises are nothing but lies and deceit. They begin writing postcards as a form of resistance and in a bid to raise awareness: Stop the war machine! Kill Hitler! Putting their lives at risk, they distribute these cards in the entrances of tenement buildings and in stairwells. But the SS and the Gestapo are soon onto them, and even their neighbours pose a threat.

Two Lives

Two Lives

Europe 1990, the Berlin wall has just crumbled: Katrine, raised in East Germany, but now living in Norway for the last 20 years, is a “war child”; the result of a love relationship between a Norwegian woman and a German occupation soldier during World War II. She enjoys a happy family life with her mother, her husband, daughter and granddaughter. But when a lawyer asks her and her mother to witness in a trial against the Norwegian state on behalf of the war children, she resists. Gradually, a web of concealments and secrets is unveiled, until Katrine is finally stripped of everything, and her loved ones are forced to take a stand: What carries more weight, the life they have lived together, or the lie it is based on?

Run Lola Run

Run Lola Run

Lola receives a phone call from her boyfriend Manni. He lost 100,000 DM in a subway train that belongs to a very bad guy. She has 20 minutes to raise this amount and meet Manni. Otherwise, he will rob a store to get the money. Three different alternatives may happen depending on some minor event along Lola's run.

Flightplan

Flightplan

Flying at 40,000 feet in a state-of-the art aircraft that she helped design, Kyle Pratt's 6-year-old daughter Julia vanishes without a trace. Or did she? No one on the plane believes Julia was ever onboard. And now Kyle, desperate and alone, can only count on her own wits to unravel the mystery and save her daughter.

The Caveman's Valentine

The Caveman's Valentine

Romulus, a misunderstood musician turned recluse hiding from personal demons in a New York City cave, finds the frozen body of a young drifter in a tree. The authorities, including his police officer daughter, claim the death is accidental. Romulus is convinced the man was murdered by a prominent art photographer but how can he prove he's right when everyone thinks he's insane?

Retribution

Retribution

When a mysterious caller plants a bomb under his car seat, a bank executive begins a high-speed chase across the city to complete a specific series of tasks — all with his kids trapped in the back seat.

The Company You Keep

The Company You Keep

A former Weather Underground activist goes on the run from a journalist who discovers his identity.

The Quiller Memorandum

The Quiller Memorandum

After two British Secret Intelligence Service agents are murdered at the hands of a cryptic neo-Nazi group known as Phoenix, the suave agent Quiller is sent to Berlin to investigate.

Octopussy

Octopussy

James Bond is sent to investigate after a fellow “00” agent is found dead with a priceless Fabergé egg. Bond follows the mystery and uncovers a smuggling scandal and a Russian General who wants to provoke a new World War.

The Bourne Supremacy

The Bourne Supremacy

A CIA operation to purchase classified Russian documents is blown by a rival agent, who then shows up in the sleepy seaside village where Bourne and Marie have been living. The pair run for their lives and Bourne, who promised retaliation should anyone from his former life attempt contact, is forced to once again take up his life as a trained assassin to survive.

Berlin Falling

Berlin Falling

Frank left his life as a soldier behind and wants to rebuild his life in Brandenburg. He is on his way to meet his daughter, Lily, after a long time of not seeing her. As he stops at a gas station he meets Andreas, who needs a ride to Berlin. Reluctantly, Frank agrees to take Andreas with him - unaware of the consequences.

The Seven-Ups

The Seven-Ups

A tough detective who is part of an elite New York City unit is trying to find out who killed his partner, but uncovers a plot to kidnap mobsters for money.

I Am David

I Am David

A 12-year-old boy manages to flee a Communist concentration camp on his own, through sheer will and determination. All he has in his possession is a loaf of bread, a letter to deliver to someone in Denmark, and a compass to help get him there.

Remember

Remember

With the aid of a fellow Auschwitz survivor and a hand-written letter, an elderly man with dementia goes in search of the person responsible for the death of his family.

6 Below: Miracle on the Mountain

6 Below: Miracle on the Mountain

An adrenaline seeking snowboarder gets lost in a massive winter storm in the back country of the High Sierras where he is pushed to the limits of human endurance and forced to battle his own personal demons as he fights for survival....

Solo Sunny

Solo Sunny

Sunny is the singer of a band trying to establish itself in the East Berlin music scene. They play regular gigs in small towns, but Sunny feels out of touch with the audience and with her life as a whole. She begins a relationship with Ralph, an amateur saxophonist and philosophy student, who writes her a very personal song—but his obsession with death and unfaithful lifestyle are not for her. After getting into a quarrel with a band member who harasses her and telling off a show host, she is thrown out of the band. Abandoned, she struggles to regain control over her life.

Foreign Correspondent

Foreign Correspondent

American crime reporter John Jones is reassigned to Europe as a foreign correspondent to cover the imminent war. When he walks into the middle of an assassination and stumbles on a spy ring, he seeks help from a beautiful politician’s daughter and an urbane English journalist to uncover the truth.

Passage to Marseille

Passage to Marseille

A freedom-loving French journalist sacrifices his happiness and security to battle Nazi tyranny.