Every decision we make can become part of a story bigger than life itself. This is the case with many of the iconic figures in this sample, whose life story may be over today, but the impact of what happened leaves us much to ponder and complex feelings to pick through after the fact.

All the films in this sample are so much more than just great stories. Only works with a very strong dramaturgical approach and a high artistic level have been selected here, and many of the filmmakers must already be writing speeches for the inevitable awards coming their way.

The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Nov. 20, Saturday at 8:45 p.m., Apollo Kino Solaris

America is a country where countless TV evangelists have prospered for decade upon decade. Here we step inside an empire that Jim Bakker (Oscar nominee Andrew Garfield) and his wife, Tammy Faye (Jessica Chastain), have built. The film is seen as a strong contender for the Oscars this season.

The Shadow Hour
Sunday, Nov. 21, at 9:15 p.m., Coca-Cola Plaza
International premiere. With film guests

Writer Jochen Klepper lived with his Jewish wife and stepdaughter in Germany during the Third Reich. At the end of 1942, his wife and stepdaughter were not allowed to leave the country, and it seemed inevitable that they would be sent to a concentration camp. When Adolf Eichmann forces Jochen to choose between a career and marriage, he makes the unprecedented decision made by thousands of Germans in mixed marriages so quietly that few have heard of it today.

The Last Execution
Nov. 22, Monday at 5:30 p.m., Coca-Cola Plaza
With director Franziska Stünkel

Franz Walter has just received an engineering degree when he is offered an unexpected job by the East German Foreign Intelligence Agency. Unfortunately, Franz's job becomes more and more terrifying. In a story inspired by the life and death of a very real East German, Lars Eidinger shines in this delicate portrait of a man with much greater and lesser ambitions, caught between the gears of time and politics.

Dear Thomas
Nov. 23, Tuesday at 8 p.m., Coca-Cola Plaza
International premiere. With film guests

The struggles of the East German writer and filmmaker Thomas Brasch have been shaped into a poetic and enchanting cinematic journey about the artist and the 20th century during his lifetime. Director Andreas Kleinert does not follow the usual rules of biographical film; he has shaped from Brasch's biography a homage to art and its power to change. In a black and white film with a wonderful pictorial language, the shots alternate between reality and a feverish dream.

The Year Before the War
Nov. 26, at 9 p.m., Coca-Cola Plaza
With film guests

It's the winter of 1913. Bilingual Hans, who works in a hotel in Riga, has never seen war. At a strange meeting, Hans is mistaken for a traitor who is on his way to a Swiss sanatorium. Sigmund Freud tries to influence Hans to perform assassinations. The young man falls in love with a spy/dancer and comes to a party with underground anarchists led by Vladimir Lenin in the company of Franz Kafka.