Former heads, senior officers and the rector of the MfS law school explain how the ministry functioned. The interviewees see themselves as legitimate actors with a clear mandate and political enemy image. They provide an insight into the techniques and routines of secret service work, psychological tricks during interrogations and the management of “unofficial collaborators”. What they all have in common is that they are not aware of any moral guilt. The directors contrast their footage of prisons and archives with the statements of former Stasi employees in an attempt to expose their evasions and efforts at suppression.
A documentary on the late American entertainer Dean Reed, who became a huge star in East Germany aft...
The life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, who survived the Nazi reign as a trans woman and helped s...
A retrospective look at the youth cultures born in the German Democratic Republic. A celebration of ...
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, thousands of documents were hastily shredded by the dreaded GDR p...
Docudrama about life, career and breakdown of Erich Mielke, the former Security chief of East German...
A locomotive journey traversing the North to the South of the German Democratic Republic on the eve ...
Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker take a powerfully personal journey through the former East German...
In 2016, DEFA celebrates its 70th anniversary: the film embarks on a journey into the exciting film ...
The free, almost naive view from the perspective of a child puts the "68ers" in a new, illuminating ...
The film accompanies Jenny Gröllmann, a German actress, during the last two years of her life.
From an official perspective, marginal youth culture did not exist in East Germany. The topic of sub...
In the documentary Last To Know political prisoners, sent to jail for openly opposing the East Germa...
Was my father really a spy, as his file in the former East German Secret Service (STASI) suggests? T...
In 1989, thirteen GDR scientists and technicians set off from East Berlin to the Georg Forster resea...
With access to recently-opened court files, Julie Etchingham reveals some of the Stasi's UK operatio...