About a journalist and his cameraman visiting East Germany, former GDR, 25 years later again after their journey which took place in January 1990, just between the Fall of the Wall and the reunification with West Germany, comparing the old pictures with the present of 2015 and meeting former interview partners a second time. An impressive work of time documentary showing seemingly surreal scenes about the changings of cities, industrial locations and lifes in different political and economical systems.
The vegetables come from the garden behind the house, the fish comes out of a can, and money for bread is earned at the factory. It’s because of this money that they came here. Women from Turkey stand side-by-side with women form Mecklenburg at the conveyor belt of a fish-processing factory in Lübeck. Their hands are stained brown, the pungent smell of fish clings to them, and their arms and backs ache. If these jobs were done by men, machines would have been invented long ago to replace them. But female labour is cheap and the women do not complain. They have learned to work – and therein lies the source of their pride. (Source: https://www.artechock.de/film/text/filminfo/g/ge/gefubr.htm)
Volker Koepp revisits Zehdenick and Grüneberg, East Germany. People are struggling with the new political and economical conditions shortly before the German Reunification.
In reunified Berlin, a city guide from the Eastern part of the city offers tours for West Berliners and grapples with his pre and post "Wende" identity.
Follows the Eastern German family Schütze and their greengrocer's shop for 10 years, beginning right after Germany's reunification.
The army of the GDR, called NVA had not survived the reunification of Germany, it was completely absorbed by the Bundeswehr and scrapped subsequently. But what apparently went on so smoothly as a peaceful unification of hostile brothers quietly left deep scars in the East German landscape.
Documentation about the intra-German relations after the reunification.
In late 1990 times are changing in Zehdenick, Brandenburg: Russian troops are leaving, the German Reunification brings euphoria and new hope, but unemployment rises steadily.
Journalist Daniela Dahn interviews the East-German author Christa Wolf during the German reunification: reflections on history, changing politics, life and work.
In 1989, thirteen GDR scientists and technicians set off from East Berlin to the Georg Forster research station in the Antarctic. During their expedition the Berlin Wall fell on November 9th. Cut off from the images that go around the world, the men can only experience the historical events passively. When they returned in the spring of 1991, their homeland was a foreign country. The documentary reconstructs the thoughts and feelings of the East German researchers on the basis of eyewitness accounts, diary excerpts, letters, film material, grandiose landscape shots from the location of the action and unique photos to make the consequences of the events tens of thousands of kilometers away on the small GDR expedition in the middle of the eternal ice tangible.
Outside Time is the second feature film of Andreas Kleinert, a German director who grew up in the GDR and who started making films at the time of the fall of the Wall. The film is set in a small town somewhere in Brandenburg, a place which is rapidly falling "outside time"; since it cannot keep pace with the changes brought about by unification and the transformation of the former GDR. The Russian troops stationed there have withdrawn and their barracks have turned into rat-infested ruins; the intercity trains do not stop there any more and even the regional railway link to Berlin is going to be suspended. Most young people are leaving. When Sophie introduces her lover to her mother and her brother, Sergej becomes embroiled in the incestuous tensions underlying the relationship between Sophie, her brother, Georg, and her mother. The arrival of the Russian implodes the claustrophobic sham existence that held this dysfunctional family together.