A family saga set during the final years of the GDR. Surgeon Richard Hoffmann may have come to an opportunistic arrangement with the system a long time ago, but his way of life enables state security officials to blackmail him. Richard’s son Christian manages to pass his final secondary school exams despite a number of conflicts and goes through a tough and eventful time after joining the National People’s Army. His uncle Meno is an editor and struggles, at times only half-heartedly, against the parameters set by state censorship. The fall of the Wall in November 1989 seems to be felt as a salvation by the protagonists. The adaptation of Uwe Tellkamp’s novel of the same name does away with the epic scope of the written original, but was considered one of the best things to come out of German TV in 2012.
This film is part of the film series "Film Macht Geschichte", which are screened from the 22nd of March until the 3rd of May 2019 in the Goethe Hall.
Director: Christian Schwochow, 2 x 90 min., colour, 2012
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