The Promise

East Berlin, 1961. Days after the Wall goes up, Konrad, Sophie and three friends plan an escape westward through the sewers. A moment of hesitation leaves Konrad behind, and over the next twenty-eight years the two manage only four brief reunions. Konrad becomes a respected astrophysicist and uses scientific congresses abroad as cover, but in a country where the Stasi tracks everyone it finds suspicious, including his sister Barbara and her husband Harald, holding on to a private life and a sense of self becomes exhausting work. Margarethe von Trotta wrote the screenplay with Peter Schneider for this German, French and Swiss co-production, and when the Wall finally comes down in 1989 the reunification of two countries turns out to be a far simpler matter than the reunification of two people.