Coming Out

Heiner Carow's 1989 film is the only feature made in East Germany to treat homosexuality openly. Philipp teaches at a secondary school; he is with his colleague Tanja to keep up appearances and has suppressed the truth about himself. A bar he walks into by mistake one night and his attraction to Matthias, whom he meets there, break that arrangement; for the first time he considers not hiding, which puts both his relationship and his job at risk. The film was shot in real meeting places in East Berlin and put the gay life of the period on record; the scene in which an older man describes what he went through under the Nazis is its heaviest passage. On the night it opened the Berlin Wall was breached, so it remained one of the last productions of a country. Who it's for: viewers curious about the history of queer cinema and East German production. Who it's not for: anyone expecting a brisk account; the film moves at a measured pace.