The death of Rainer Werner Fassbinder in the early 1980's marked the end of the New German Cinema whose filmmakers sought out to create a cinema that would separate them from the generation of their parents, the generation that perpetrated the crimes of the Nazi regime. Towards the end of the same decade, Germany would undergo another significant historical change with the fall of the Berlin wall, which would later lead to the dissemination of the East German state and to the unification of Germany to its pre-war status. This course tracks the German cinema made after unification, and aims first and foremost to present it as a cinema that focuses on the questioning and (re)construction of identity. The films will be discussed through the framework of a number of recurring tropes which serve as a backdrop for the negotiation of the new German identity. More often than not, they testify to the fact that this search for identity lies not in re-affirming a single perception of German nationality, but rather a multiplicity of identities within the new German society, and possibly, a conscious attempt to avoid any fixed categorization of German identity. The topics discussed will include, among other things: Berlin as a space for negotiating reconciliation between East and West; the utopia of unification and renewed nostalgia for the East ('Ostalgie'); the 'Heritage' films and coming to terms with the German past; immigrants, minorities and refugees and their place in German cinema today. Filmmakers whose films will be discussed and screened include, among others: Andreas Dresen, Oliver Hirschbiegel, Dany Levy, Harun Farocki, Oskar Roehler, Wolfgang Becker, Tom Tykwer, Fatih Akin, Christian Petzold and the Berlin School. Each film represents a different stylistic or generic approach of its respective filmmakers to the topic under which it is presented.