Die Familie

“Two years probation. For a gunman. Now that is something!“ At least 136 people died an unnecessary death at the Berlin Wall, more than 800 people at the inner German border. While the perpetrators, for the most part, avoided having to account for their actions, the relatives of the victims still suffer the loss of their loved ones today. They were neither told about the sequence of events leading up to the deaths, nor the whereabouts of the bodies – even now some relatives are still in the dark. The film contrasts emotional statements by those affected against the apathetically formulated reports found in the Stasi files – a bureaucratic form of German that seems wholly inappropriate in this context. On the 50th anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall, and 24 years after it came down, filmmaker Stefan Weinart finally opens up a dark chapter of recent post-war European history.