The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 symbolized the end of the Cold War and spurred on the peaceful revolutions that caused Communism to crumble. Twenty years later, the documentary film “Beyond the Wall” examines the communist era and its legacy, illustrating the endurance of the human spirit in the face of political dogma.
The central characters include Martina Ulbrich, a teacher and staunch communist who was disillusioned by the way East Germans were treated after the collapse of the GDR; Sławomir Idziak, an Academy Award-nominated cinematographer who helped produce a golden age of Polish cinema despite government censorship; and John Bok, a Czech dissident who was imprisoned and tortured by the Communist regime, and who now battles miscarriages of justice in the Czech Republic.
Filmed in the Czech Republic, Germany and Poland, the film shows the struggles and sacrifices of dissidents who helped cause the system’s collapse. We see how the euphoria when the wall fell turned to bitterness and resentment, and how, despite two decades of free elections, a free press and freedom to travel, some still find themselves yearning for the safety net of communist times.