When the Berlin wall is built to split up the city, a group of youths try to escape from the East to the West. Among them are Sophie (Meret Becker) and Konrad (Anian Zollner), but only the former makes it to the west. Konrad stays in the East, becoming a successful astronomer. Over the following decades, the lovers keep on living their lives with new families, occasionally meeting each other when circumstances are benign. Older versions of Sophie and Konrad are played by Corinna Harfouch and August Zirner.Through the melodramatic romance of Sophie and Konrad, the film examines the effects of the Wall on the Germans. Things are more complicated than "East is bad, West is good": there are movements to both directions, and people have many reasons to move, or to choose to stay. The film conveys the atmosphere of disunity and bureaucracy well through realistic visual style, but the love story is strong in its own right too.

As the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall approaches, I re-watched this film with more pleasure than the first time around.Others have commented much of what I'd have to say. But one particularly touching scene stuck most in my memory: Alexander (from West Berlin) brings a toy panda bear to his half-sister Elizabeth (in East Berlin). He suggests they could go to the Western Zoo to watch a live animal. But Konrad, their father, knows this isn't possible at the time, and suggests the Eastern Tierpark instead - but they don't have pandas there, only brown bears. So at night, he takes the panda from sleeping Elizabeth's arms, and paints it brown...Just retelling this little part of the film makes tears well up in my eyes again.

I can only praise the makers of this film, because many people did not experience it and unhappily, some do not want to hear about it. A female friend of mine recently told me, that now she knows why the Berlin Wall was built. Why, I asked. "Because the Russians didn't want the Americans to come in." It would be laughable, if it wasn't so sad. This is a person with university education and supposedly she never heard of people trying to get out of East Berlin or other communist countries. Most people form their opinions in their youth and many are not able to change their minds and admit to themselves, let alone to others, that they were wrong. Simply they ignore the facts. By the way, even after the wall went up, the Americans still could go to East Berlin, if they so desired. It was built to keep ordinary people in, because East Germans were leaving through Berlin in alarming numbers.

Ms. von Trotta directs with a very sure hand this very large canvas political drama about the divisions the German wall put between friends on both sides and how foolish its arbitrariness was. Wonderful acting and well worth spending time with. Stunningly photographed, as well.