VATERLANDSVERRAETER

by Annekatrin Hendel
  • (c) 2010 IT WORKS!
  • (c) 2010
  • (c) 2010

    Synopsis

    Once with the Stasi, always with the Stasi? Once you were in the agent controller's grasp you could never escape - that's what they say, anyway. Writer Paul Gratzik was an unofficial informer for the GDR State Security Service for twenty years, broke with them in the 80's and exposed his identity. "Vaterlandsverräter" ("Traitors to the Fatherland") is a portrait of an exceptional man. On one hand it is a psychological profile of one of an extraordinarily paradoxical figure, a "man of extremes": satyr, seducer, radical and hermit. On the other hand it tells a story about the GDR, its critics and the Stasi of the kind that has never been told before in all the 20 years since the end of East Germany.

    Festivals

    61 Berlinale PERSPCTIVE
    Grimme Prize 2013