Il dominio della resa

1984. East Berlin is a large open-air prison, enclosed within the perimeter of an impenetrable wall that divides the city in two. A world of iron and concrete, oppressive and opaque, scrutinised in every corner by the Stasi, the most ubiquitous and powerful secret service ever, which uses the eyes of an army of spies, either professional or coerced. Here, all people and places have ears and memories; here, friendship cannot exist because anyone, on any given day of any given year, can be interrogated and broken; here, a mediocre omnipotence is exercised over the destinies of the innocent. Immanuel knows this well. Accused of dissent twenty years earlier and separated from his young daughter, he has never stopped looking for her among the faces of all the young strangers he meets on the street. He is lost in a loneliness alleviated only by Tanja, a widow who no longer believes in love. Irene also knows how difficult it is to look at an unattainable horizon. She loves literature and dreams of crossing the border she glimpses from her window, at the top of one of Berlin’s many tower blocks. She would like to plan a crazy escape, but she is held back by her passion for Klaus, a high-ranking Stasi officer and married man, with whom she has a relationship made up of fleeting encounters, silent separations and overwhelming returns. For Immanuel, Irene and Klaus, the time will come to choose between freedom, love and themselves. Francesco Pala returns to scrutinise the world hidden behind the Iron Curtain and, with his usual lucid view of history, illuminates possible existences and real events that demand not to be forgotten.