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Berlin, 1914. Albert Einstein, a middle-aged man, is struggling to concentrate on his study. The nagging voices of his ten- and four-year-old children come through the closed door. Einstein's collar bursts, he yanks open the door and loudly scolds his sons. The children are shocked into silence. This film describes the physicist in his Berlin years during his rise to superstardom in science and, in parallel, in his ambivalent role as a father and family man.
Status
In Production
Original Language
DE

Berlin in June of 1940. While Nazi propaganda celebrates the regime’s victory over France, a kitchen-cum-living room in Prenzlauer Berg is filled with grief. Anna and Otto Quangel’s son has been killed at the front. This working class couple had long believed in the ‘Führer’ and followed him willingly, but now they realise that his promises are nothing but lies and deceit. They begin writing postcards as a form of resistance and in a bid to raise awareness: Stop the war machine! Kill Hitler! Putting their lives at risk, they distribute these cards in the entrances of tenement buildings and in stairwells. But the SS and the Gestapo are soon onto them, and even their neighbours pose a threat.

In 1984 East Berlin, dedicated Stasi officer Gerd Wiesler begins spying on a famous playwright and his actress-lover Christa-Maria. Wiesler becomes unexpectedly sympathetic to the couple, and faces conflicting loyalties when his superior takes a liking to Christa-Maria.