A documentary that explores questions of secrecy and power in relation to the East German Secret Police (the 'Stasi') within East German society. The film is based upon key findings from an extensive research project, 'Knowing the Secret Police', and reflects upon how different kinds of knowledge were circulated through social, religious, political and literary networks within the former GDR. The filmmakers present this research with footage filmed at key locations throughout East Berlin and the wider surrounding landscape, including the Stasi archives and former HQ, Karl-Marx-Allee, Volkspark Friedrichshain, rural 'dacha' cabins, the urban neighbourhood of Prenzlauerberg and the social housing estates of Marzahn.
A documentary spy thriller that takes place during the Cold War but which gets its resolution today in the small village of Burträsk outside Umeå, northern Sweden. A deeply-believing priest, well-liked and respected by everyone or a ruthless spy who has no hesitation in referring his friends and colleagues to the dreaded security service STASI in the former GDR. Who is Aleksander Radler, the man with two different personalities?
At the end of the GDR existence, around 8,000 children and young people were so-called "unofficial employees" of the State Security. They were approached and recruited in youth clubs, churches and schools. They were assumed to spy on their friends or report on their parents.
Berlin, 1989. Helena and Louise are happy in their relationship if it wasn't for this huge wall separating them. The only solution is writing letters. But what the two of them don't know is that Stasi officer Bernd who works for the surveillance department, is enjoying their constant letter exchanges as his daily bed time story. While Bernd has yet to figure out how to read between the lines, his assistant Eberhardt grows suspicious and desperately tries to open Bernd's eyes. But maybe Bernd isn't as oblivious as Eberhardt thinks he is. While the officers are playing hide and seek with Louise's and Helena's letters, the women are already in the midst of escaping. Nothing can stop them now. Except for maybe...the Fall of the Wall?
Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker take a powerfully personal journey through the former East Germany, as Epperlein investigates her father’s 1999 suicide and the possibility that he may have worked as a spy for the dreaded Stasi security service.
In the documentary Last To Know political prisoners, sent to jail for openly opposing the East German regime that existed until the German reunification in 1990, talk about their times of trial and their lives today. Neither they, nor their families have come to terms with what happened.
While Germany sits as one of the major democratic models, an ex-prisoner of the Stasi delivers from his former cell a frightening testimony that questions the sustainability of our contemporary democracies.
East-Berlin, 1980. Two sisters, one professional fleeing assistant and one soldier. And an escape that could go either way...
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, thousands of documents were hastily shredded by the dreaded GDR political police. 16,000 bags filled with six million pieces of paper were found. Thanks to the meticulous work of technology, the destinies of men and women who had been spied on and recorded without their knowledge could be reconstructed.
At the beginning, everything looks like a normal job. But in the apartment of a cruelly murdered woman, Judith Kepler, a crime scene cleaner by trade, encounters her own past. The dead woman had done research and wanted to contact Judith. And she knew her closely guarded secret: Judith had been brought as a child under mysterious circumstances in a DDR children's home. Origin: unknown. Now, 25 years later, Judith has the evidence in her hands that she was swapped as a child. A stranger lived her life. Did this stranger also die of her - Judith's - death?
Docudrama about life, career and breakdown of Erich Mielke, the former Security chief of East Germany.
A young man from an early age falls in love with a girl whose family is not in good standing with the ruling Communist party. His father however is a member of the "Stasi", the secret state police. The father not only hinders his son's relationship with the girl, but he arranges for his son, after finishing school, to become a Stasi spy himself.
Germany, 1981. State Security Service agent Harald Love is sent on a secret mission from the GDR to the Federal Republic, to verify an informant with the code name "Heinz" who is suspected to be a double agent. A job that may change his life forever...
East Berlin, 1985. Lars, a young Stasi Lieutenant, discovers his parents are underground smugglers. Now, with his commanding officer over for dinner, Lars struggles to reconcile his feeling of kinship with his ideology.
A German Stasi officer is tasked with an assignment to reveal the identity of a mysterious assassin known as 'The Englishman'.