Ich war neunzehn

"Attention, attention, German soldiers! We begin our mission. The war is lost for good. Your situation is hopeless. Do not wait. Act." Gregor Hecker spoke such sentences almost daily in mid-April 1945. The answer was gunfire. Gregor, a German by birth, emigrated to the Soviet Union after the Nazis seized power and grew up in Moscow. He is 19 years old when he returns to his native country as a soldier in the Red Army in the final days of the Second World War. As he was fluent in German, he was mainly in demand as a translator and to deliver messages via loudspeaker. Along the way, he encounters people with different realities and attitudes. The fatherland has become foreign to him. (Wolf, GDR 1967 - FSK 12)
More information: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ich_war_neunzehn

YouTube trailer: https://youtu.be/lkP4gK5Iwrw

We are showing the film in the original language in German.
The film is part of the film series "DEFA -Antifa", which is dedicated to the anti-fascist creative line of the state film studio of the GDR. How did DEFA manage to tell exciting stories from the time of fascist Germany and to realize themes such as the struggle for resistance, the art of survival, opportunism and the power structures of the Nazi era? Why do these stories still concern us today? The first film in the series, "I was 19" by Konrad Wolf, is set in the dramatic time of April 1945, when Germany was no longer at war and there was still no peace.

After the screening of the film, Ulrike Imhof & Angelika Nguyen will talk about the film, its making, its context to the present and answer your questions.