Best German thriller movies

Yuri Orlov is a globetrotting arms dealer and, through some of the deadliest war zones, he struggles to stay one step ahead of a relentless Interpol agent, his business rivals and even some of his customers who include many of the world's most notorious dictators. Finally, he must also face his own conscience.

Swedish thriller based on Stieg Larsson's novel about a male journalist and a young female hacker. In the opening of the movie, Mikael Blomkvist, a middle-aged publisher for the magazine Millennium, loses a libel case brought by corrupt Swedish industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström. Nevertheless, he is hired by Henrik Vanger in order to solve a cold case, the disappearance of Vanger's niece

In 1984 East Berlin, dedicated Stasi officer Gerd Wiesler begins spying on a famous playwright and his actress-lover Christa-Maria. Wiesler becomes unexpectedly sympathetic to the couple, and faces conflicting loyalties when his superior takes a liking to Christa-Maria.

An elite Navy SEAL uncovers an international conspiracy while seeking justice for the murder of his pregnant wife.

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.

A three-person crew on a mission to Mars faces an impossible choice when an unplanned passenger jeopardizes the lives of everyone on board.

A writer stumbles upon a long-hidden secret when he agrees to help former British Prime Minister Adam Lang complete his memoirs on a remote island after the politician's assistant drowns in a mysterious accident.

A woman with a mysterious illness is forced into action when a group of terrorists attempt to hijack a transatlantic overnight flight. In order to protect her son she will have to reveal a dark secret, and unleash the inner monster she has fought to hide.

An aging thief hopes to retire and live off his ill-gotten wealth when a young kid convinces him into doing one last heist.

Enjoying college life as a popular student, Laura shares everything with her more than 800 friends on Facebook. But one day, after accepting a friend request from a social outcast named Marina, Laura’s life is cursed...

Benjamin, a young German computer whiz, is invited to join a subversive hacker group that wants to be noticed on the world's stage.

In this classic German thriller, Hans Beckert, a serial killer who preys on children, becomes the focus of a massive Berlin police manhunt. Beckert's heinous crimes are so repellant and disruptive to city life that he is even targeted by others in the seedy underworld network. With both cops and criminals in pursuit, the murderer soon realizes that people are on his trail, sending him into a tense, panicked attempt to escape justice.

A young Spanish woman who has newly moved to Berlin finds her flirtation with a local guy turn potentially deadly as their night out with his friends reveals a dangerous secret.

When terrorists try to seize control of a Berlin-Paris flight, a soft-spoken young American co-pilot struggles to save the lives of the passengers and crew while forging a surprising connection with one of the hijackers.

20 volunteers agree to take part in a seemingly well-paid experiment advertised by the university. It is supposed to be about aggressive behavior in an artificial prison situation. A journalist senses a story behind the ad and smuggles himself in among the test subjects. They are randomly divided into prisoners and guards. What seems like a game at the beginning soon turns into bloody seriousness.

A low-ranking thug is entrusted by his boss to dispose of a gun that killed corrupt cops, but things spiral out of control when the gun ends up in wrong hands.

Francis, a young man, recalls in his memory the horrible experiences he and his fiancée Jane recently went through. Francis and his friend Alan visit The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, an exhibit where the mysterious doctor shows the somnambulist Cesare, and awakens him for some moments from his death-like sleep.

A man sees the dark side of the time-manipulating biotech company he works for when a crushing debt forces his wife to give up 40 years of her own life.

When a mysterious brick wall encloses their apartment building overnight, Tim and Olivia must unite with their wary neighbors to get out alive.

Sir Robert Beaumont is behind schedule on a railroad in Africa. Enlisting noted engineer John Henry Patterson to right the ship, Beaumont expects results. Everything seems great until the crew discovers the mutilated corpse of the project's foreman, seemingly killed by a lion. After several more attacks, Patterson calls in famed hunter Charles Remington, who has finally met his match in the bloodthirsty lions.

When a man's only son goes missing, he travels to the town where his ex-wife lives in search of answers. To play a man whose life is clouded by mystery, McAvoy will not be given a script of dialogue.

A truck driver has been forced to smuggle illicit cargo to save her brother from a deadly prison gang. With FBI operatives hot on her trail, Sally's conscience is challenged when the final package turns out to be a teenage girl.

Klara is going to die today unless she kills her husband instead. The Calendar Killer has given her that impossible choice. When Jules starts his night shift at a telephone safety helpline for lonely women on their way home, Klara's call reaches him. He soon becomes her last hope for survival and races against time to save her.

'Der Baader Meinhof Komplex' depicts the political turmoil in the period from 1967 to the bloody "Deutschen Herbst" in 1977. The movie approaches the events based on Stefan Aust's standard work on the Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF). The story centers on the leadership of the self named anti-fascist resistance to state violence: Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin.

The boredom of small town life is eating Bill Williamson alive. Feeling constrained and claustrophobic in the meaningless drudgery of everyday life and helpless against overwhelming global dissolution, Bill begins a descent into madness. His shockingly violent plan will shake the very foundations of society by painting the streets red with blood.

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.

A serial killer strikes fear in the hearts of residents of Hamburg during the early 1970s.

The story of CARGO takes place on rusty space-freighter KASSANDRA on its way to Station 42. The young medic LAURA is the only one awake on board while the rest of the crew lies frozen in hibernation sleep. In 4 months will Laura's shift be over.

Chris, a wealthy divorcee, lives in a high-tech house of his own design in Montana. His life changes when he meets Sky, a mysterious young woman who draws him out of his shell and moves in after Chris is injured.

A young lawyer stumbles upon a vast conspiracy while investigating a brutal murder case.

After having a chance encounter with a mysterious character, Wendy, a young working class mother, discovers that she has super powers.

Two sisters go diving at a beautiful, remote location. One of the sisters is struck by a rock, leaving her trapped 28 meters below. With dangerously low levels of oxygen and cold temperatures, it is up to her sister to fight for her life.

Desperate to keep custody of his daughter, a mixed martial arts fighter abandons a big match and races across Berlin to attend her birthday party.

A weekend cruise on a luxurious party yacht goes horribly wrong for a group of old high-school friends when they get stuck in the water many miles from shore and a happy reunion turns into a fight for survival.

A coroner finds a capsule in the head of a heavily mutilated corpse, containing a phone number and single word: the name of his daughter.

A hiking trip into the wild turns into a desperate bid for survival for five friends on the run from a mysterious shooter.

Pia and Jan have just fallen in love and arranged to meet Pia's friends for a game night. Jan meets Pia's friends for the first time and is under pressure to make the perfect first impression. When Pia's ex-boyfriend shows up and even Jan's buddy's tips can't save anything, everything is at stake: the relationship, the friendship, and the definition of truth.

Raimund Gregorius, having saved a beautiful Portuguese woman from leaping to her death, stumbles upon a mesmerizing book by a Portuguese author, which compels him to suddenly abandon the boring life he has led for years and to embark on an enthralling adventure. In search of the author, Gregorius acts as detective, pulling together pieces of a puzzle that involves political and emotional intrigue and the highest possible stakes. His voyage is one that transcends time and space, delving into the realms of history, medicine and love, all in search of true meaning to his life.

In the 1970s, a British sound technician is brought to Italy to work on the sound effects for a gruesome horror film. His nightmarish task slowly takes over his psyche, driving him to confront his own past.

Snatched off the street and held for ransom, a bound and gagged woman uses her limited powers to derail her two masked abductors' carefully laid plans.

While James More is held captive by terrorists in Somalia, thousands of miles away on the Greenland Sea, his lover Danny Flinders prepares to dive herself in a submersible into the deep bottom of the ocean, tormented by the memories of their brief encounter in France and her inability to know his whereabouts.

A professional cellist has an encounter with a stranger on the subway which has unexpected and far-reaching ramifications on his life.

Tom Ripley, an American who deals in forged art, is slighted at an auction in Hamburg by picture framer Jonathan Zimmerman. When Ripley is asked by gangster Raoul Minot to kill a rival, he suggests Zimmerman, and the two, exploiting Zimmerman's terminal illness, coerce him into being a hitman.

Medical student Paula wins a place at an exclusive Heidelberg medical school. When the body of a young man she met on the train turns up on her dissection table, she begins to investigate the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death.

In 2016 the sun has turned the entire world into a scorched and barren wasteland. The humans who have survived are either resourceful or violent, and sometimes both. Marie, her little sister Leonie, and best friend Phillip, are in a car headed to the mountains - rumor has it there is water there. Along the way they meet Tom, a first-rate mechanic. But can they trust him? Fraught with deep distrust, the group is lured into an ambush where their real battle for survival begins.

Cairo, 2011. A police officer investigates the murder of a woman in a luxurious hotel in the days leading up to the Egyptian revolution.

Cate Blanchett stars as Philippa, a British teacher living in Turin, Italy, who has seen many friends, including her husband, fall victim to drug overdoses. Philippa has repeatedly contacted the police with information about Turin's biggest drug dealer but, complicit in his dealings, they have completely ignored her. So Philippa decides to dole out her own form of justice with a homemade bomb -- setting her off on a journey from young widow to fugitive on the run.

During their vacation in the French countryside, a wealthy German family becomes entangled with a young hotel worker harboring sinister intentions.

Set on an island off the coast, a techno rave party attracts a diverse group of college coeds and a Coast Guard officer. Soon, they discover that their X-laced escapades are to be interrupted by zombies and monsters that attack them on the ground, from the air, and in the sea, ruled by an evil entity in the House of the Dead... Prequel to the House of the Dead video games.

Famed architect Jeremy Angust is approached on his trip to the Paris Airport by a chatty girl named Texel Textor who needs a ride. He obliges and after they part ways at the airport entrance, he misses his flight. As he settles in the lounge, he encounters the mysterious young Texel again, who insists on telling her strange story — and the conversation grows stranger and more twisted until it turns sinister and deadly.

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.

While doing a friend a favour and searching for a runaway teenager, a police detective stumbles upon a bizarre band of criminals about to pull off a bank robbery. The screenplay by Christopher Cannan and Steve Barancik is based on the short story "The House in Turk Street" by Dashiell Hammett.

When Karate champion Michael Rivers wins the last tournament of his career, shady businessman Ron Hall offers him the opportunity to fight in an illegal Kumite in Bulgaria against the world’s best martial artists. When Michael declines, Hall has his daughter kidnapped and, in order to rescue her, Rivers is left with no choice but to compete in the deadly tournament. Arriving in Bulgaria, he finds out that he is not the only fighter whose loved one was taken. Rivers enlists the help of trainers Master Loren, and Julie Jackson but will it be enough for him to win the tournament and save his daughter’s life?

A federal agent searches for a potential killer among the bizarre residents of a dilapidated Los Angeles hotel.

The story of Venezuelan revolutionary, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, who founded a worldwide terrorist organization and raided the OPEC headquarters in 1975 before being caught by the French police.

After a detective is assaulted by thugs and placed in an asylum run by Professor Baum, he observes the professor's preoccupation with another patient, the criminal genius Dr. Mabuse the hypnotist. When Mabuse's notes are found to be connected with a rash of recent crimes, Commissioner Lohmann must determine how Mabuse is communicating with the criminals, despite conflicting reports on the doctor's whereabouts, and capture him for good.

When a notorious German serial killer is captured after committing some of the most heinous acts against humanity ever imaginable, a farmer and police officer from a sleepy rural community on the outskirts of Berlin is drawn into the case as he searches for the answers to a murder that has shaken his tight-knit community.

13-year-old Sinikka vanishes on a hot summer night. Her bicycle is found in the exact place where a girl was killed 23 years ago. The dramatic present forces those involved in the original case to face their past.

Erik has is own motorbike workshop in a sleepy little town. He may have the telling word ‘scoundrel’ tattooed onto his lower arm but he nonetheless creates an impression of a well-behaved average Joe. His relationship with his girlfriend Julia is going well and her daughter Linda is very fond of her new Dad. But then all of a sudden the mysterious Henry appears and begins following him about like a sinister shadow. The more Erik tries to shake off his diabolical guest the more Henry intrudes into his life. But then when a violent gangster named Keitel enters the fray and threatens not only Erik but Julia and Linda, Erik’s seemingly ideal world begins to run off the rails.

In the brutal trench fighting of the First World War, a British Infantry Company is separated from their regiment after a fierce battle. Attempting to return to their lines, the British soldiers discover what appears to be a bombed out German trench, abandoned except for a few dazed German soldiers. After killing most of the Germans, and taking one prisoner, the British company fortifies to hold the trench until reinforcements can arrive. Soon, however, strange things being to happen as a sense of evil descends on the trench and the British begin turn on each other.

A successful artist loses control of his life after his young daughter's death. A chance for a new start appears, but all is not what it seems.

After the owner's bankruptcy, the crew is stranded on a freighter for months. Dealing with the stress of isolation, seafarers gradually surrender to madness and terror.

15-year-old Nina witnesses a terrible crime that puts her life in danger. Being an orphan, she has nobody she can trust. When corrupt businessman Thomas Backer sends five killers after Nina, witness protection officer, Max, a former special-forces soldier, is responsible for her safety. They soon overcome their initial distance to find common ground. While on the run from the ruthless Backer, Rudi, one of Max’s former comrades, comes to their rescue – and continues to help the two out of some precarious situations. Even Max’s ex-girlfriend Sara is not just there to help him as a federal prosecutor. Nevertheless, Nina and Max face ever-increasing danger, and soon the teenager is not the only one in need of a guardian angel – Max could use one too.

Dr. Mabuse and his organization of criminals are in the process of completing their latest scheme, a theft of information that will allow Mabuse to make huge profits on the stock exchange. Afterwards, Mabuse disguises himself and attends the Folies Bergères show, where Cara Carozza, the main attraction of the show, passes him information on Mabuse's next intended victim, the young millionaire Edgar Hull. Mabuse then uses psychic manipulation to lure Hull into a card game where he loses heavily. When Police Commissioner von Wenk begins an investigation of this mysterious crime spree, he has little to go on, and he needs to find someone who can help him.

A domestic house cat named Francis investigates the grisly feline murders taking place in his new neighborhood.

The dark secrets of a seemingly peaceful island threaten to swallow up an orphaned student when he grows close to a mysterious new teacher.