Brilliant , but you to have been there at the time...

Rating: Null/10 (8 August 2011)

I just watched this film on BBC2 last night, had never heard of it before but was captivated.
I never went to the former DDR until last year, but worked in West Germany at exactly the time portrayed here, the mid-1980's, height of the Reagan area. There was a huge feeling of rivalry between West and East Germany, every product which by then was coming over from the "Ostis" was derided in West Germany. There are also hints of the former tension between Prussia, and Saxony which was 100% in the East. Certainly any report in "Der Spiegel" would have triggered such a fury in the ranks of the East German regime at that time.
I met someone who had just come over from the East, working in a factory. He was genuinely scared, like the guard in the canteen, of making jokes about the regime, in my case I made a joke on a tram ride with him about the USSR football team beating Hungary 4-0.
To me the weirdest part is the STASI typewriter-expert, who can tell where all the official typewriters are and what makes etc. What happened to this kind of nerd when the Wall came down?
All in all a gripping film, well-acted.