Every family has a secret, a darkness no one wants to touch. For some, their secrets lie buried in a country that doesn’t even exist anymore: Three families from out of the GDR’s estimated 250,000 political prisoners wrestle with the question, how much of the past do they want to allow in their present?
Across three generations marked by separation, repression and guilt, some wounds are so deep no one dares to reopen them, even after decades. But now the kids are grown, and pressure to break the truce of silence is growing – from both sides. Yet, how do you ask your parents the right questions? Do you really want to know the whole story? And who’s responsible for taking the first step?
As it sheds light on the controversies within just three families impacted by the GDR’s inter-generational consequences, this film becomes a record of how Germans are dealing with recent history.
Info
Cinema documentary
Germany 20006
Länge: 82 Min
Format: Mini-35mm
Directors: Marc Bauder, Dörte Franke
Director of Photography: Börres Weiffenbach
Film Editor: Rune Schweitzer
Music: B. Fleischmann
Sound Editor: Mario Köhler
Production Sound Mixer: Lars Ginzel
Image Editor/Title designer: Till Beckmann
Producer: Marc Bauder
ZDF Editor: Burkhard Althoff
A bauderfilm production in co-prodution with ZDF – Das kleine Fernsehspiel, 2006
Festivals
56th Berlinale – International Film Festival Berlin
21st DOK.fest International Documentary Film Festival Munich
17th FID International Film Festival – Marseille
25th Vancouver International Film Festival
30th São Paulo International Film Festival
30th Duisburger Filmwoche
9th Festival du Cinéma Allemand, Univerciné Nantes
Festival of German Films in London, Dublin, Moscow, Prague, Budapest, etc.
One World International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, Prague
11th Sofia International Film Festival
Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival
Document 5 International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, Glasgow
19th Festival de Cine Europeo, Lima
11th FIDOCS, Festival Internacional Documentales, Santiago, Chile
Saratov Sufferings International Documentary Drama Film Festival
International Human Rights Film Festival Albania, Tirana
Docudays, Kiev, Ukraine
PLANETE+ DOC FILM FESTIVAL, Warsaw, Poland
Awards
1st place award in the Human Rights Competition at the Docudays in Kiev
Nominated for INPUT 2007
Nominated for the German Film Critics’ Award for Best Documentary, 2007
Press
“It’s precisely because of their restraint that the filmmakers succeed in effectively bridging the gap between past and present…”
Berliner Zeitung
“Three life stories, skillfully woven together, depict the fate of so many other political prisoners from the GDR.”
Deutschlandradio Kultur
“Documentary film’s answer to The Lives of Others.”
Hamburger Morgenpost
