On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 2014, credo:film produced a documentary film series for rbb. Headed by Grimme Award winner Lutz Pehnert, a collective of directors tells 25 stories of East Germans.
The GDR has deeply marked its inhabitants – a subject that was pored over and examined in a mass market-friendly way; there was even a posthumous Academy Award. Subject closed. But people’s eyes tell a different story. You can still see radiant, venomous and disillusioned faces when “East Germans” talk about how their lives were shaped by the GDR. The collapse of the system brought disruptions, disappointments, a complete re-orientation on the professional and often the private level for the former citizens of the GDR. Or else the big chance, travel, careers, new happiness.
A quarter of a century after the reunion the focus of their stories is on 25 years of non-GDR life. How have these people changed, how did they stay the same? The GDR is gone, the memory is still there.
The episodes focus, among others, on SUPERillu as the magazine of the East German soul, a socialist model village that is being turned into a memorial, a keeper of files who guards the Stasi archive of her hometown, a gallery owner who took the Leipzig School to international success, and a debt counsellor whose clients are mainly East Germans.
