In the organizer's words:

BÄRBEL BOHLEY - DIARY OF A REBELLION

D/CH 2025 - 96' - DF - Director: Fosco Dubini, Barbara Marx

With director Fosco Dubini as a guest!

Bärbel Bohley was an East German artist and civil rights activist. She was arrested in 1988 as an opposition activist in the GDR and forcibly deported to the West. She kept a diary about her time in West Germany and her travels to England, France and Italy, as well as her encounters with Western European intellectuals and politicians, as a testimony to her unbroken resistance. After 6 months, she fought for her return to the GDR - a unique event. She became a co-founder of the civil rights movement 'Neues Forum' and the prominent face of the peaceful revolution in 1989. She died of cancer in 2010.

The film focuses on the short, intensive phase of radical change in the GDR in 1988-89. Parallel to the stages of the diary, which the film narrative follows, close friends and comrades-in-arms describe their own experiences with the state security, the perfidious repressive measures and the prison conditions in the Berlin Hohenschönhausen prison. The question of whether political prisoners in the prisons may have been exposed to radioactive radiation also sheds new light on the GDR regime. In addition, the protagonists supplement Bohley's own statements with their perspectives on their expatriation and their biographies.

As part of the Stranger Than Fiction documentary film festival!