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Title: Ballon (2018)
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| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| Friedrich Mücke | ... | Peter Strelzyk | |
| Karoline Schuch | ... | Doris Strelzyk | |
| David Kross | ... | Günter Wetzel | |
| Alicia von Rittberg | ... | Petra Wetzel | |
| Thomas Kretschmann | ... | Oberstleutnant Seidel | |
 |
Jonas Holdenrieder | ... | Frank Strelzyk |
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Tilman Döbler | ... | Andreas 'Fitscher' Strelzyk |
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Christian Näthe | ... | Hauptmann Heym |
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Till Patz | ... | Peterchen Wetzel |
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Ben Teichmann | ... | Andreas Wetzel |
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Ronald Kukulies | ... | Erik Baumann |
| Emily Kusche | ... | Klara Baumann | |
| Sebastian Hülk | ... | Oberfeldwebel Lesch | |
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Gernot Kunert | ... | Oberstleutnant Schirra |
| Ulrich Brandhoff | ... | Oberstleutnat Tornow (as Ulrich Friedrich Brandhoff) | |
In the summer of 1979, in Thüringen, in East Germany, two families put together a crazy plan. They are desperate to leave the DDR for the 'West' and plan to flee in a homemade hot air balloon. After sewing and tinkering for weeks, the amateurs make their first attempt. Meters from the West German border, their balloon suffers from the rain and crash lands. Luckily, they manage to avoid being caught by the police. However, the wreckage from their escape attempt is found and that triggers a desperate manhunt. The tension rises as the families determine to try again, and a race against time ensues. On the one hand, the authorities, desperate to track down the traitors, become aware that a second attempt is being planned. On the other, the would-be escapees, conscious of the search drawing ever nearer, need to build a more robust, weatherproof balloon - and avoid leaving too many clues.
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This film is based on a true story and recounts an evasion attempt, from GDR to FRG, in 1979 during the Cold War, with two families ballooning over a heavily guarded area, starting from Pößneck, a small town within Thuringia, knowing that the shortest distance as the crow flies to reach Bavaria and the Western Bloc is about 25 km. We may see this movie as a commemoration of the manifold unsuccessful attempts and also, in slight advance, of the 30 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the German reunification (1990).
It's well played, suspenseful and points up two main issues: 1) The secret preparation of such an expedition, in a country which is supposed to be a republic if one refers naively to the acronym GDR, and which turns out to be a dictatorship controlling every gesture and every word, thanks to the Stasi. 2) Leaving those who are not part of the expedition and who stay in the GDR such as grandparents or friends, in order to start a new life, ex nihilo. Otherwise, even though it might be a part of the same true story, the episode of the cigarette pack and the American embassy is too showy and, in my humble opinion, pollutes the film.
Finally, despite a decade studying German, from college to the end of my studies, I am not sensitive enough to the subtleties of variations of accents between the different Länder, contrary to sh_bronstein, in his review dating from November 2018. Although his rating is harsh, I find that his review is relevant but does not concern me. Fortunately somehow.