SONNENALLEE - Filmreihe 35 Jahre Mauerfall

In the organizer's words:

35 years ago, the Berlin Wall was brought down and shortly afterwards an entire political system. The fall of the Wall was the symbolic climax of the peaceful revolution in the GDR - and so it was ultimately the courage of the people that went down in the history books.

To commemorate the events of 35 years ago, a series of films will be screened at the Roxy Lichtspielhaus in October, looking at the events and experiences of that time from different perspectives (sometimes East, sometimes West).

Leander Haußmann's "Sonnenallee" is set in the 1970s, at a time when there were still sectional plenipotentiaries. The Soviet Union is the big brother and the GDR is the country in which Micha Ehrenreich (Alexander Scheer) lives. He lives in a street whose longer end is in the West and whose shorter end is in the East.

While the Wessis gawk at their East German neighbors from viewing platforms, the residents of the eastern section of Sonnenallee try to lead a halfway normal life.

17-year-old Micha and his best friend Mario (Alexander Beyer) live at the shorter end of Sonnenallee, right at the border crossing between West and East Berlin. Like the other boys in the clique, they are about to graduate from high school and are eagerly practicing everyday rebellion, which they express with (mostly forbidden) rock and pop music or original Jinglers jeans. They also gain their first experience of love and the problems of growing up by conquering the school's most beautiful girl, Miriam (Teresa Weißbach). Micha's uncle Heinz (Ignaz Kirchner) from West Berlin often visits his East German relatives and smuggles numerous useless things across the border. Meanwhile, mother Ehrenreich (Katharina Thalbach) secretly rehearses her escape with a found West German identity card...