The Last Execution

Franz Walter is a young, ambitious scientist. When he is promised a professorship he does not hesitate, and agrees to work for East German foreign intelligence until the post comes through. He finds out afterwards what the work involves: getting innocent people to talk through blackmail, and wearing down defectors and their relatives with forged letters, invented medical reports and surveillance. When he cannot carry it any longer he starts looking for a way out. Franziska Stünkel's film is built on a true case. The Stasi officer Werner Teske was sentenced to death for espionage and desertion in a one-day trial in 1981 and became the last person executed in East Germany. The German title, Nahschuss, means a shot fired at close range to the back of the neck.