Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Cast: Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Koch, Ulrich Tukur, and Thomas Thieme
Rating: 15
Length: 137 minutes
Country: Germany

“Before the Fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germany's Secret Police Listened to Your Secrets.”

The horrifying, sometimes unintentionally funny system of observation in the former East Germany. In the early 1980s, the successful dramatist Georg Dreyman and his longtime companion Christa-Maria Sieland, a popular actress, are big intellectual stars in the socialist state, although they secretly don't always think loyal to the party line. One day, the Minister of Culture becomes interested in Christa, so the secret service agent Wiesler is instructed to observe and sound out the couple, but their life fascinates him more and more...

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"The Lives of Others is a powerful but quiet film, constructed of hidden thoughts and secret desires. It begins with Wiesler teaching a class in the theory and practice of interrogation; one chilling detail is that suspects are forced to sit on their hands, so that the chair cushion can be saved for possible use by bloodhounds. It shows how the Wall finally fell, not with a bang, but because of whispers." Roger Ebert