Night Crossing

In East Germany two families decide the only way across the border is over it. They try to fly west in the dark in a hot air balloon sewn at home. The film is not interested in heroism. It is interested in preparation that looks like housework: buying fabric draws suspicion, the sewing machine runs for months, the burner is built by trial and error. The tension comes less from the night of the escape than from the year leading up to it. The form is family filmmaking. As a Disney production it keeps violence and politics measured and puts the emphasis on the children. The story is true. Peter Strelzyk, an electrician, and Günter Wetzel, a bricklayer, friends at the same plastics factory, shared their intention to escape in March 1978; after more than a year of attempts and one failed flight they reached West Germany with their families on 16 September 1979. The failed attempt had alerted the East German authorities, so the final flight was also a race against being found. The producer Tom Leetch had read about the escape in a 1978 piece in The Times. Delbert Mann directed, with John Hurt, Jane Alexander and Beau Bridges. The same events were filmed again in Germany in 2018 as Ballon. Who it is for: viewers who like true escape stories and the Cold War period, and families watching together. Who it is not for: anyone wanting political depth. The film does not describe East Germany in detail; it uses it as the place to be escaped.