Shores of Hope

East Germany in the 1980s. Conny and Andreas have been friends since childhood and want only one thing, to go to sea. They work three years in the port at Rostock. In the end permission to join a crew is put in front of them, on one condition: they are to work for the state security service and secretly record their foreman. The offer divides the two of them. Toke Constantin Hebbeln's German film shows the state security service of the period as it was: it wins people not by force but by giving them what they want. Alexander Fehling and August Diehl take the leads. The telling declares nobody a hero or a traitor; it follows the cost of the decision for years afterwards. The tone is heavy and bleak.