A world-changing event East Berlin, 1988. Rebellious 18-year-old Marco knows what he doesn’t want: to be like his dad Jürgen, a high-ranking Stasi officer. But when he gets in trouble and is saved from a gruelling sentence in one of the GDR’s notorious prisons, he has to promise his dad to do his military service. The price is high: he has to leave his girlfriend Anja behind, his first love.
Marco finds solidarity in the army, along with a sympathetic father figure. He even starts to question his own identity as he transforms from unpolitical punk into model soldier, ready to protect the borders of the GDR and prevent its citizens from fleeing. Marco’s liberal-minded mother Hanna jeopardizes her family when she and Anja join a freedom movement.
Jürgen knows that the end is near and is paralysed by fear. Marco, though still loyal to his nation, finally sees the inhumanity of his ‘Democratic’ republic, which cultivates a vast network of spies. It is now early November 1989, and Marco is told that he may have to shoot at his fellow citizens – and possibly at his own mother and girlfriend. Marco is reaching a breaking point. But the tension continues to mount …
2009 marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which ushered in the greatest political change in the second half of the 20th century: the fall of Communism and the spread of democracy in Europe. A world-changing event that is unforgettably captured in this drama.