Squatters and fare dodgers, super jams and Chinese in Bavaria, crime thrillers without dead bodies and, time and again, whimsical comedies: the film oeuvre of Manfred Stelzer (1944-2020) is as extensive as it is varied and shows how a politically committed documentary filmmaker of the turbulent seventies managed to remain true to himself and his aspirations even as a busy feature film director in television - whether »Balko«, »Tatort« from Münster or »Polizeiruf 110« from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. This first comprehensive book about the director and screenwriter and his one hundred films from more than four decades brings together images and texts from his large film family as