🎬 Eldorado KaDeWe

Set during the glittering, hedonistic, and deeply volatile era of the Weimar Republic in 1920s Berlin, the epic mini-series centers on the intersecting lives of four young individuals at the famous luxury department store, Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe). Fritzi Jandorf (Lia von Blarer) is the progressive, fiercely independent daughter of the store's wealthy Jewish founder, Adolf Jandorf. While her deeply traumatized, shell-shocked brother Harry (Joel Basman) struggles to manage the family empire amidst the lingering horrors of WWI, Fritzi falls passionately in love with Hedi (Valerie Stoll), a spirited but impoverished salesgirl working behind the store's cosmetics counter.

As Fritzi and Hedi embark on a deeply intense, forbidden sapphic romance, they find an escape within the inclusive, avant-garde walls of "Eldorado," Berlin's legendary real-world queer nightclub. Meanwhile, their lives tangle with Georg (Damian Thüne), an ambitious clerk from a poor background climbing the store's administrative ladder. Over the course of the decade, the four friends navigate a world defined by hyperinflation, radical artistic liberation, intense drug subcultures, and shifting gender norms. However, their dazzling dream of personal freedom slowly collides with historical reality as the late 1920s bring the Great Depression and the terrifying, violent rise of the Nazi party, threatening to tear their lives, their loves, and the KaDeWe legacy apart.

💡 Did you know?
A Modern Sonic Twist: Director Julia von Heinz intentionally pushed back against the standard, rigid conventions of historical costume dramas. To emphasize that the characters' progressive struggles with queer identity, capitalism, and political polarization mirror modern society, she hired legendary contemporary composer Max Richter to mix electronic synth beats into the orchestral score and explicitly featured modern German rap music during key transition scenes.

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