Gundermann

Gerhard Gundermann wrote songs in East Germany and drove an excavator in an open-cast coal mine. He gave up neither: he would play a set and then go to his shift. In 1992, after the Wall came down, the opened files revealed that he had informed for the Stasi for years as an unofficial collaborator. The same files showed he had been under surveillance himself. Andreas Dresen starts from that exposure and works backwards to explain how Gundermann could be both a believer and a collaborator. The film does not absolve him and does not draw a simple traitor either; it shows how the system split people in two. Laila Stieler wrote the screenplay, from an idea Dresen had put to her years earlier. Alexander Scheer plays Gundermann and sings the songs himself. The film opened on 23 August 2018. At the German Film Awards it took a record ten nominations and won six Lolas: best film, best director, best screenplay, best actor, production design and costume design. Who it's for: Anyone interested in East German history, musician biographies, and morally clouded portraits. Who it's not for: Some scenes stay closed without knowledge of Gundermann's music and context, and the telling jumps back and forth.