Beyond the Blue Border

The year is 1989 and the place is East Germany. Hanna and Andreas are targets of the secret police. Their plans for study have been taken from them. They will not be allowed the professions they wanted. What they get instead is arbitrary decisions and pressure. Mistrust is growing around them. The two of them see one way out. To cross the Baltic Sea by swimming. The distance is fifty kilometres. There is very little they can carry. They tie a thin rope around their wrists. That thin rope is the only thing that saves them from absolute loneliness. As the hours in the water stretch on, the reckoning changes. The film carries the tension of that summer out onto the sea. Lena Urzendowsky and Willi Geitmann appear in the hundred and two minute film, a German production Sarah Neumann finished in 2024.