What is the best German movie of all time?

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1974 melodrama about an elderly German cleaning woman who falls in love with a young Moroccan immigrant, a fierce critique of racial prejudice and social conformism.

Oliver Hirschbiegel's 2004 devastating account of Hitler's final days in the Berlin bunker as the Third Reich collapsed, Bruno Ganz delivering one of cinema's most controversial performances.

Werner Herzog's 1982 mad epic following a visionary lunatic who drags a full-sized steamship over a jungle mountain to fund an opera house in the Amazon, partly the story of its own insane production.

F.W. Murnau's 1922 unauthorized Dracula adaptation, the founding document of vampire cinema, with Max Schreck's Count Orlok as cinema's most terrifying screen monster.

Fritz Lang's 1931 groundbreaking sound thriller about a child murderer hunted by both police and the criminal underworld, with Peter Lorre's riveting, tragic performance.

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's 2006 Oscar-winning drama about a Stasi officer surveilling a playwright in East Berlin who begins to question his own allegiance.

Werner Herzog's 1972 descent into madness with Klaus Kinski as a conquistador who commandeers a raft on the Amazon and declares himself emperor, shot in the actual Peruvian jungle.

Volker Schlöndorff's 1979 adaptation of Günter Grass's Nobel Prize-winning novel about a boy who decides to stop growing at age three, a surreal allegory of the Nazi rise in Danzig.

Wim Wenders's 1987 poetic fantasy about angels invisibly watching over the divided city of Berlin who yearn to become human, a shimmering meditation on mortality, love, and history.

Tom Tykwer's 1998 breathless thriller sending its flame-haired heroine through three parallel realities in 20 minutes each to save her boyfriend's life, a kinetic showcase of pure cinema.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1979 allegory of West Germany's postwar Wirtschaftswunder through the story of a woman who builds a life of ruthless pragmatism while waiting for her imprisoned husband.

Wolfgang Becker's 2003 bittersweet comedy about a son who preserves the illusion of East Germany for his bedridden mother after reunification, a tender portrait of a vanished world.