Or somewhere else too - actually the movie is quite well told and it does have a lot of fears that it portrays very well. It does show us how the state is able to lure people in and make them work and spy on others. And them feeling like it is their duty. It also is revealing how when they finally realize what is actually going on ... it is almost impossible to escape the clutches of the state.
Quite the well made movie, with paranoia and a lot of thriller elements. Very well acted and an ending that might feel like a punch in the gut/stomach. Not for everyone and not an easy movie... at all.
95% - Critics
6.7Plot summary
The ambitious scientist Franz Walter doesn't hesitate when he is promised a professorship at the university. He immediately accepts, pledges absolute loyalty to the system and agrees to work for the GDR's foreign intelligence service until he can take up his new position. Together with his colleague Dirk, he is sent on foreign assignments to West Germany. Franz soon has to use blackmail to get innocent people to talk. But his superiors go even further: GDR refugees and their relatives are targeted to be psychologically destroyed, forged letters, medical diagnoses, surveillance and wiretapping are on the agenda. However, this is more than Franz can bear: he feels powerless and increasingly isolates himself. When he then decides to steal secret documents for a later defection to the West, this results in an unfortunate chain reaction leading to his arrest and ultimately to his execution.
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After seeing this it feels impossible to rate it with anything but 10.
It's written after a true story, the last death sentence executed in and by the socialist DDR (East Germany).
But in reality the film is not primarily about this death sentence but about the "work" of eastern German Stasi and the coldness and brutality with which this regime tried to uphold it's socialist ideas in the face of public opinion, not hesitating to lie, manipulate and kill, ruining lifes in the wake of its political agenda.
The acting is absolutely brilliant, Eidinger plays the role with almost unreal intensity.
The story itself is something that should be known, especially in face of the nowadays often romanticized life in Eastern Germany.
It's not a feel good movie though....but it was not a feel good country either. Or only if you didn't look behind the scenes.
Please watch. It's worth it from beginning to end.
And it's a very relevant movie especially in times of the war in Ukraine and Russian propaganda at this very moment!