Turning point (2019)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Turning time |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2019 |
| length | 119 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Sven Bohse |
| script | Silke Steiner |
| production | Heike Vossler |
| music | Fabian Römer |
| camera | Michael Schreitel |
| cut | Ronny Mattas |
| occupation | |
| |
Turning Point is a German television film from the year 2019 , of October 2, 2019 in First aired.
action
The double agent Saskia Starke got into trouble when the end of SED rule in the GDR was announced in late autumn 1989 . She works primarily for the American mission in West Berlin, but unofficially for the CIA , is married to an American with whom she has two children - and at the same time spies on intelligence for the Stasi as an agent at the headquarters . When the GDR population stormed its headquarters, she tried to make her files disappear so that no one would find out about her work for the Stasi. The only chance for this is to get access to the documents they are looking for from the employees in the archive there. By Markus Wolf she receives the information that his organization they no longer could protect. Only the KGB could do that, and it would have to defend to that if it wanted to be safe from the Americans. However, Saskia wants to keep trying to get to her file.
Jeremy Redman, Saskia's superior at the CIA, is now looking for a mole in her organization. Based on some evidence, he suspects Saskia in this regard. To be sure, he wants to get Saskia's husband Richard to confirm this suspicion. Richard is confused and first of all wants to be sure for himself whether his wife has any secrets from him. To do this, he secretly searches her things, drives to the place where she supposedly grew up, and in doing so he realizes that Saskia has obviously not told him the truth about her past. He confronts her because he is no longer even sure that she married him out of love, but that he could only have been a means to an end for her. Saskia makes it clear to Richard that she loves him and her children more than anything.
The next day, Saskia is caught by her colleague Colin Sanders removing her name from the documents that a defected Stasi officer had delivered to the CIA. But she receives unexpected support and help from her colleague Betsy Jordan, who comes out to her as a KGB agent and shoots Sanders. Both promise to keep their secrets to themselves and to present Sanders as the wanted mole. The plan works and Jeremy Redman apologizes to Saskia.
Production and publication
The fictional plot of the film was originally geared towards a mini-series similar to Weissensee or Ku'damm 56 , but was then shortened to a two-hour film. This was filmed from October 8, 2018 to November 16, 2018 in Berlin and the surrounding area. It was produced by the Constantin subsidiary Moovie GmbH in coproduction with Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg (rbb) and ARD Degeto . Moovie founder Oliver Berben worked as an executive producer .
The premiere took place on August 21, 2019 as the opening film of the Festival of German Films in Ludwigshafen. The broadcast on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on the eve of the Day of German Unity in 2019 was part of a themed evening that also included a Maischberger talk with the title Spies in the Cold War - Dangerous Double Life . Wendezeit reached 4.29 million viewers and a 15.1 percent market share.
criticism
The journalist Oliver Junge rated the film in the FAZ as an “excellent anniversary film” and as “a historically discursive, completely unobtrusive, truly exciting and outstandingly played genre piece, which has enough self-confident looseness to make the spectacular sinking of the GDR simple to be left in the background. "
The film service , on the other hand, was less convinced, awarded the film two out of five possible stars and assessed it as "remaining largely eye-catching in the depiction of emotions [...]". "Even the thriller elements are only partially convincing and are counteracted by the superficial political background."
Thomas Geringer from tittelbach.tv assessed: "The real hunt for the rosewood files - microfilms that contained all the real names of the GDR spies in the West - is told as a two-hour genre piece that turns a private family drama into the (not overly convincing) agent- Action mixes. Interesting are the conflicts of the main character, a spy who serves the declining GDR and who has founded a family in the West. Your professional and private double life creates tension and subdued emotions. "
Martin Seng wrote atquotemeter.de: “With 'Wendezeit' a significant piece of German history is impressively illuminated. The strong drama, the exciting plot and the battle between two secret services are entertaining, lavishly staged and can undoubtedly join the better public service productions. In the almost continuously exciting film, the few lengths are hardly significant and offer great entertainment for two hours. "
Web links
- Turning point in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Turning time at filmportal.de
- Turning time. DasErste.de, accessed on October 2, 2019 (topic page for the program).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Christian Buß: Unsuccessful espionage thriller: The class enemy in my bed . In: Spiegel Online . October 1, 2019 ( spiegel.de [accessed October 3, 2019]).
- ↑ turnaround time at crew united
- ↑ a b Das Erste: "Wendezeit": themed evening with a spy thriller on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in the First Petra Schmidt-Schaller plays a double agent in Berlin. In: press portal. ARD Das Erste, September 30, 2019, accessed on October 3, 2019 .
- ↑ turning point. In: Films. Festival of German Film Ludwigshafen am Rhein, accessed on October 2, 2019 : "Our film on 30 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall."
- ↑ Topic evening: turning point. In: DasErste.de. Retrieved October 3, 2019 .
- ↑ Lies That Become Truth. In: New Osnabrück Newspaper. October 2, 2019, accessed October 3, 2019 .
- ↑ "Wendezeit": The fall of the Berlin wall thriller convinces the audience. In: DWDL.de . October 3, 2019, accessed October 3, 2019 .
- ↑ Oliver Junge: This is what good television can look like , in: FAZ from October 2, 2019, accessed on October 3, 2019
- ↑ turning point (2019). In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed February 22, 2020 .
- ↑ Thomas Geringer: Petra Schmidt-Schaller, Thomsen, Steiner, Bohse. Breathtakingly unlikely at tittelbach.tv accessed on November 17, 2019.
- ↑ Martin Seng: Film criticism atquotemeter.de, accessed on November 17, 2019.