Berlin International Film Festival 2000

by Volker Schlondorff

Inspired by the arrests of West German terrorists in the GDR shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Volker Schlöndorff and screenwriter Wolfgang Kohlhaase tell the (invented) story of West German terrorist Rita (Bibiana Beglau), who goes underground in the GDR. Schlöndorff approaches his controversial topic cool-handedly, eschewing mere action and thrills, and the 28-year-old Beglau gives a convincing, emotionally resonant performance.

At the story's centre lies the repressed relationship between Rita and GDR-born Tatjana (Nadja Uhl).

"One wants to leave, the other wants to arrive," says Schlöndorff. They both don't like the states they were born in. So they flee. Another typically German trait."

Schlöndorff tells this German story with "faces that cannot be remodelled just like building facades."

It is a deeply felt human drama about the discord between romance and revolution and the quest for happiness, great and small.

Silke Schütze