East Berlin in the late eighties: Philipp, a young teacher, begins a love affair with his colleague Tanja. For years, he has kept his real sexual orientation a secret, until a re-encounter with his former gay friend, Jacob, once again makes him aware of his suppressed longings. In a gay bar, Philipp meets Matthias and falls in love with him. From then on, the teacher leads a double life. Tanja knows nothing about Matthias, nor does Philipp tell Matthias about his relationship with Tanja. It’s just a matter of time before things go awry. COMING OUT was the first and only feature film in the GDR to openly examine the theme of homosexuality. It premiered on 9 November 1989, the evening on which the Berlin Wall fell.

An ambulance races through East Berlin, bringing Matthias to a hospital. The young man has just tried to commit suicide. Now the doctors have to pump his stomach. This was a very dramatic sequence in which the actor actually had to swallow a tube and fight against choking until sweat started to pour down his face. Director Heiner Carow does not even try to simulate the ordeal by editing the scene. In his production, there is a realism that sometimes also causes the spectator to feel pain. “Why did you do that?” a doctor asks. Matthias cries: “I’m gay!” COMING OUT tells the story of how this attempted suicide came about.

Philipp introduces himself to a class as their new teacher. In the corridor, he accidentally bumps into his future colleague Tanja, who has been injured so badly that he has to tend to her bleeding nose. This is also a prophetic image. The two begin to date, fall in love and sleep with one another. Soon Philipp moves into her flat. He’s a good, idealistic and passionate teacher, sometimes so unconventional that his supervisor interferes in a strict and stubborn manner. In its subtext, the film shows considerable doubt about authority figures. Sometimes Philipp, who unconsciously seeks to resist his circumstances, responds quite angrily to the conformist and dispassionate work of his students.

Philipp and Matthias are at the opera. The two don’t know one another yet. The production is “The Magic Flute”, directed by Harry Kupfer. Later, in the urban railway, both observe a group of skinheads beating up an African. Philipp and Matthias intervene. This is a very revealing scene from today’s perspective as well. It shows that right-wing violence existed in the GDR even before the country came to an end.

A re-encounter with a former friend evokes a long-repressed and stifled memory in Philipp, which turns into a desire. A short time later, he visits a gay bar where he becomes better acquainted with Matthias. The next morning, he wakes up in a strange bed. Tanja reproaches him for staying out, but he doesn’t have the courage to tell her the truth. In departing, he only leaves her a note: “I need a few days to find myself!” He spends the next night with Matthias. Carow stages this encounter in a careful and erotic way, but without the provocative gay exoticism that Rosa von Praunheim, for example, used to push the gay cause. The director’s attitude is much closer to that of Fassbinder, who declared of his gay film FOX AND HIS FRIENDS: “It depicts a love like any other.”

Tanja is pregnant with Philipp’s child. During a concert intermission, she is surprised to see her partner and Matthias affectionately greet one another. Caught off guard by Philipp’s double life, Tanja and Matthias feel betrayed by him. Philipp promises Tanja that he will never let her down – and then goes yet again to the gay bar to find the deeply disappointed Matthias. A vocalist sings Zarah Leander’s famous song “Kann denn Liebe Sünde sein?" (Can Love Be a Sin?). Philipp, now drunk, brutally beats an old man who talks to him. The old man defends the younger man to the waiter and starts a long conversation, "Why jump into bed immediately, just because you’re gay?” Full of melancholy, he tells of his great love 50 years ago. He and his partner were denounced and wound up in a concentration camp. He complains that everyone has forgotten the gay victims of Nazi terror. The sequence is a climax of COMING OUT, yet it could be misinterpreted as a strategy on the part of the author to take the wind out of the sails of the GDR censors. Carow had to fight for this project for years. He ends the story with Philipp’s ultimate resistance against his school principal. He simply remains silent. Relieved, he then rides his bike through the city.

The premiere of the film, on 9 November 1989 in East Berlin, aroused so much interest that two screenings had to be organised that evening. COMING OUT would have been a sensation if it had not been overshadowed by another event. The moviegoers were told that the border crossings had been opened to the West – it was the beginning of the end of the GDR.


Filmography (feature films, selection)

1956/57 SHERIFF TEDDY
1958 SIE NANNTEN IHN AMIGO
1963 THE LANNEKEN WEDDING (DIE HOCHZEIT VON LÄNNEKEN)
1965/66 DIE REISE NACH SUNDEVIT
1968/70 KARRIERE
1972/73 THE LEGEND OF PAUL AND PAULA (DIE LEGENDE VON PAUL UND PAULA)
1975 ICARUS (IKARUS)
1977/78 UNTIL DEATH DO US PART (BIS DASS DER TOD EUCH SCHEIDET)
1988/89 COMING OUT
1991/92 THE MISTAKE (DIE VERFEHLUNG)
1995/96 FÄHRE IN DEN TOD


Hans Günther Pflaum

Production Period

1988/1989

Production Year

1989

color

color

Aspect Ratio

1:1,66

Duration

Feature-Length Film (61+ Min.)

Type

Feature Film

Genre

Drama

Topic

Relationship / Family, LGBTIQ / Queer, Sexuality

Available Media

DCP, Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Digital Film

Original Version

German (de)

DCP

Subtitles

English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Italian (it), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (short), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar), Czech (cs), German (full)

Blu-ray Disc

Subtitles

English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Italian (it), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (short), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar), Czech (cs), German (full)

DVD

Subtitles

English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Italian (it), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (short), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar), German (de), Czech (cs)

Digital Film

Subtitles

English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Italian (it), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (short), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar), Czech (cs), German (full)