Zu den Sternen

Jonas and Ines are in love and want to spend their vacation together camping on the Baltic coast. But Ines’s narrow-minded parents intervene and insist that the young couple joins the family vacation. Problems arise, so everyone ends up traveling to the Bulgarian Black Sea on their own. Along the way, Jonas meets a beautiful Dutch girl who is going to India via Turkey…

18-year old Georg and 13-year old Barbara have been playing together as children. Play becomes love later, which leads to a catastrophe , as their parents are hostile leading to file a report to the court, as Barbara is still under age.

GDR, August 1989: Hanna and Andreas became a target of the secret police and had to give up their plans for their future studies and desired professions. Instead, they face arbitrariness, mistrust and reprisals. Their only chance for a self-determined life lies in fleeing across the Baltic Sea. Fifty kilometres of water separate them from freedom - and only a thin connecting rope around their wrists saves them from absolute loneliness.

East Germany 1978. Karoline and Robert, teenagers who used to live in the same house until Robert's family moved, meet again at this year's holiday-camp. First love, first nude experience, first self-made theatre performance of "Romeo and Juliet". A look at the east-German youth in the late seventies.

August 13, 1961: The passengers on the interzonal train from Munich to East Berlin learn 3½ hours before crossing the border that the Wall is being built in Berlin. They have 3½ hours to make a life-changing decision: to get off the train or keep going.

The tragic love story between 17 year-old Gerat Lauter, who is in search of the truth, and his much older teacher Claudia, as it becomes a criminal case with state complicity in the chaotic GDR autumn of 1989.

While many GDR opposition activists emigrated to West Germany at the beginning of the 1980s, the well-known singer-songwriter Bettina Wegner held on to her homeland against all odds. Although she was sent to prison as a young mother, she remained convinced that it was worth fighting to make the GDR a better, freer society. However, life as an undesirable person in the state becomes a real ordeal for her and her family.

This first co-production between the GDR and Great Britain is intended to contribute to an understanding of the situation and attitudes of millions of working people in opposing social orders. Using the example of shipyard workers, fishermen, the brigade and family of a trade union active cook and unemployed person of various ages and professions in Newcastle on the one hand and a brigade of crane operators of the Warnowwerft and fishermen of the Warnemünde cooperative on the other hand, insights into the way of life and attitudes of people of our time are to be conveyed.

The viewpoints of women from a country that no longer exists preserved on low-band U-matic tape. GDR-FRG. Courageous, self-confident and emancipated: female industry workers talk about gaining autonomy.

Nine very private encounters with different people of the post-war generation and their memories of childhood and youth. Among others, the guitarist and singer Peter "Caesar" Gläser and the actress Christine Harbort. Roland Steiner asked his contemporaries about - "What we remember ...". All interviewees are as old as the state they live in. Nine CVs from the GDR are described. They have different professions, from skilled worker and scientist, nurse and saleswoman, actress or rock musician, even a minstrel is included. They remember what shaped them: Family, school, birthdays and hot summers, the happy moments and their own failures.

Wolf Brandin is in his mid-twenties and lives with his wife and child in East Berlin at the end of the 1950s. In West Berlin, the student of electrical engineering is recruited by the American secret service CIA. But Brandin immediately notifies the State Security of the German Democratic Republic and from then on lives a dangerous life as a double agent. When Brandin reaches the breaking point, his marriage starts to unravel because Brandin is not allowed to tell his family about his double life.