Film program
Tickets
As part of the temporary installation UP!, DAS MINSK will show three selected films that deal with themes of flight, expulsion, and freedom on the occasion of German Reunification Day, drawing connections between past and present.
© Zuidenwind Filmprodukties
October 2, 2025, 7 PM
Verbotener Flug, 2014, R: Hesters Overmars, 56‘
Hester Overmars' documentary film is based on Michael Anhalt's childhood experiences, which he reconstructed and artistically processed in his 2008 photo book “Apathy. Erfurt /IX1155/82. Chronicle of an Escape Attempt.”
Her film Verbotener Flug [Forbidden Flight] tells the story of the Anhalt family from Weimar, then East Germany. In great secrecy, parents Thomas and Gundula work on a homemade glider, with which they hope to cross the inner-German border in 1983.
Their six-year-old son Michael is being molded into a little soldier of state socialism at school, and their daughter Isabell is just three years old. Longing for freedom and a better future for their children, Thomas and Gundula want to escape life in a communist dictatorship. Their escape attempt fails. Passersby had betrayed them. The parents are subsequently imprisoned. The children are separated and placed with relatives.
Thirty years later, this family looks back on their history, which still shapes their lives. How did the failed escape affect their relationships with each other? And were the parents ultimately able to realize their dream of living in freedom with their children?
October 3, 2025, 6 PM
Ballon, 2018, R: Michael Herbig, 125‘, Followed by a discussion with Günter Wetzel
To mark German Reunification Day, DAS MINSK is showing the film adaptation of the Strelzyk and Wetzel families’ successful escape story.
Summer 1979 in Thuringia. Over the course of two years, the Strelzyk and Wetzel families have hatched a daring plan: they want to flee the GDR in a homemade hot- air balloon. But the balloon crashes shortly before reaching the West German border. The Stasi finds traces of the escape attempt and immediately launches an investigation, while the two families are forced to build a new escape balloon under intense time pressure. With each passing day, the Stasi closes in on them—a nerve-wracking race against time begins...
The work UP! on the grounds of MINSK commemorates this spectacular escape story from the GDR: the homemade hot-air balloon with which the Strelzyk and Wetzel families fled across the inner-German border to the Federal Republic.
That evening, contemporary witness Günter Wetzel will be our guest and will share his perspective on the story of his escape and his time in West Germany.
Filmstill © STUDIOCANAL GmbH / Marco Nagel
© Piffl Medien
October 4, 2025, 6 PM
Green Border, 2023 R: Agnieszka Holland, 147‘
Conceived from multiple perspectives, the film Green Border draws parallels to the present day, where moving and tragic stories of flight continue to unfold at Europe’s external borders.
Director Agnieszka Holland stages a gripping drama inspired by real events in 2021. The film conveys the harrowing experiences of refugees in the exclusion zone known as the “Green Border” between Poland and Belarus and sheds light on the geographical and violent realities they face.
Deceived by President Lukashenko’s promises of political asylum and an easy journey from Belarus to the EU, refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, and the African continent find themselves in the dense forests and swamps on the border between Poland and Belarus. Polish patrols reflect the harsh realities of Europe’s border regions. The film vividly depicts the refugees’ plight as they are shuttled back and forth between Belarus and Poland for weeks and sometimes months, subjected to aggressive border controls—while the authorities try to shift responsibility.
The film not only highlights the crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border but also raises broader questions about current migration policy and human rights.