german-german border
18 items

Balloon
Ballon
Two families attempt a daredevil plan to escape the GDR with a homemade hot air balloon, but it crashes just before the border. The Stasi finds traces of this attempt to escape and immediately starts investigations, while the two families are forced to build a new escape balloon. With each passing day the Stasi is closer on their heels – a nerve-wracking race against time begins.

The Contract
A British spy helps a Russian scientist to defect from the Soviet Union by taking a perilous journey through the Eastern Bloc.

Angst
A killer is released from prison and breaks into a remote home to kill a woman, her handicapped son and her pretty daughter.

Honey Girls
Honigfrauen
The summer of 1986 begins on a promising note for Erfurt sisters Catrin and Maja Streesemann – they’ve finally received a travel permit for their first holiday at Lake Balaton. The only thing is, they have no idea that they’re being watched by the Stasi as the spies in swimming trunks of the Balaton Brigade have been watching out for East Germans attempting to escape to the West, with the holiday resort as a starting point. Catrin is quick to make new friends at the campsite, especially winsome Rudi from Mühlhausen, whose overtures clearly aim for more than just friendship; younger Maja is magically attracted to the glamour of the elegant Balaton-Residenz luxury hotel where only Western tourists are allowed to stay. Fate leads them not only into the Balaton-Residenz, but also to Tamás, the Hungarian hotel boss. Catrin immediately falls for the charming Hungarian, but Maja is the one to steal a kiss from him at the first opportunity, casting a shadow on the sisters’ otherwise close relationship. And the next disaster comes along, as their mother Kirsten has every reason to believe that her daughters’ trip to Hungary could wreak havoc on the family after an ominous phone call from Hungary. Using a pretext, she persuades her husband Karl to start the Trabant and drive after Maja and Catrin.

The Tunnel
Der Tunnel
Inspired by true events, Olympic swimmer Harry Melchior defects from East Germany in the 1960s and hatches a daring plot to help his sister and others flee East Berlin through a 145-yard underground tunnel.

Night Crossing
Two men want to escape from East Germany (under Communist rule) but they will only go if they can take their families with them. Based on a true story.

The Defector
L'espion
An American scientist is sent by the CIA to East Germany to retrieve a secret microfilm from a Soviet scientist interested in defecting to the West but the Stasi secret police's surveillance complicates matters.

Kruso
"Kruso" tells of the last summer before the Wall came down on the small island of Hiddensee in the Baltic Sea. Beyond state-organized tourism, the isolated island became a kind of artist colony every year and a place of longing for dropouts and alternatives. Due to its proximity to Denmark, Hiddensee was also the starting point for the flight across the Baltic Sea.

Tunnel to Freedom
Tunnel der Freiheit
13 August 1961: the GDR closes the sector borders in Berlin. The city is divided overnight. Escape to the West becomes more dangerous every day. But on September 14, 1962, exactly one year, one month and one day after the Wall was built, a group of 29 people from the GDR managed to escape spectacularly through a 135-meter tunnel to the West. For more than 4 months, students from West Berlin, including 2 Italians, dug this tunnel. When the tunnel builders ran out of money after only a few meters of digging, they came up with the idea of marketing the escape tunnel. They sell the film rights to the story exclusively to NBC, an American television station.

Kleinruppin Forever
Kleinruppin forever
Two twin brothers are living on a different sides of Berlin Wall after being separated after birth.

Böse Wetter - Das Geheimnis der Vergangenheit
As a geophysicist, Leonard Gehra is now known for his theories on silver mining. However, Leonard originally comes from the mining town of Buchenrode in the Harz Mountains, which he left after the mysterious death of his father in the 1970s. Now Leonard is to return to his homeland to put his previously theoretical method of mining silver in the old mining tunnels of Buchenrode into practice. The town is on the verge of bankruptcy after Ferdinand Türnitz decided to close his mines. Leonard, in whom the town's last hope is now placed, sets to work and discovers a long-kept secret during his investigations, which does not leave his father and Türnitz out in the cold.

Wir Kinder der Mauer
DDR - die entsorgte Republik
A Hero's Death
Heldentod - Der Tunnel und die Lüge
It was the biggest escape in the history of the Berlin Wall: in one historic night of October 1964, 57 East-Berliners try their luck through a tunnel into West Berlin. Just before the last few reach the other side, the East German border guards notice the escape and open fire. Remarkably, all the refugees and their escape agents make it out of the tunnel unscathed, but one border guard is dead: 21-year-old officer Egon Schultz.

Hamletmachine
Die Hamletmaschine
Hamlet and Ophelia reckon with their doomed narratives against the backdrop of the similarly doomed pre-Wende Germany and 2020s United States. A short-film adaptation of the 1977 East German Heiner Müller play of the same name.
Ost/West – Relikte einer Grenze

Aufrecht gehen. Rudi Dutschke - Spuren
Portrait of the spokesman of the student movement and extra-parliamentary opposition Rudi Dutschke, who died on December 24, 1979 from the late effects of an assassination attempt. The film is not limited to the mere biography of the extra-parliamentary politician, but also depicts the political environment as well as the late effects of the student movement. In retrospect, it condenses into a picture of a highly politicized society that had not yet begun its retreat into the private sphere.
Lost Places - Schicksalsorte der deutschen Teilung