In 1976, Beyer and a number of other prominent East German artists signed a petition in favour of author and songwriter Wolf Biermann, whose citizenship had been revoked by the government. In 1977, Beyer's contemporary comedy The Hiding Place was pulled from GDR screens after lead actor Manfred Krug emigrated to West Germany. In 1978, Private Party , a Beyer-directed television film, was suppressed. This is what sometimes makes his films somewhat unwieldy, because he never allows himself to be misled into applying comfortable solutions, and instead of using some sort of effect, he prefers putting forward counterarguments. A complimentary series catalogue, produced by the Goethe Institute, will be available at screenings.
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The story unfolds in Leipzig in the late 1980s, where three generations of a family are torn apart by the waves of change convulsing the country. Albert Bacher, the family patriarch, and a prominent official in the East German police, has died of a heart attack. Son Alexander has followed in father's footsteps and joined the State Security Service. Daughter Astrid, however, is world-weary and disillusioned, and commits an act of defiance at work that gets her expelled from the Communist Party and sent to a psychiatric clinic. Astrid's own daughter is also starting to rebel against the system, while Astrid's mother, Albert's widow, finds herself visited by an old flame who disappeared suddenly many years before.