Die Kirche bleibt im Dorf (4½ Stars)

This film is a little gem that most of my readers will never get a chance to see. It's a German comedy film set in the fictional Swabian twin villages of Oberrieslingen and Unterrieslingen. The humour might be lost on non-Swabians. In fact, the film's dialogue can hardly be understood even by German speakers, because the Swabian accents are so strong. The DVD helps out by having subtitles in Hochdeutsch ("High German"), the official German dialect. No English subtitles, sorry.

The villagers have hated one another for hundreds of years, but they're forced to get along because they only have one church between them. Of course, they sit on opposite sides of the church on Sunday. The state of perpetual animosity is interrupted when an American millionaire arrives and offers a ridiculously high price to buy the church and take it back to America. The villagers unite to solve the mystery of why the church is so valuable. Together they uncover a mystery that has been hidden for more than 400 years.

Here's the film's theme song, sung by the original cast. In Swabian, of course.