35 Years After The Fall of The Wall: Looking Back at Berlin Through Films

November 9 marks the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. To commemorate this event which had a profound impact on world history and the current political landscape, the Goethe-Institut held various film screenings in cultural institutions of major cities worldwide. In some cities, German consulates also re-screened “Bornholmer Straße” (Bornholm Street), a film from 10 years ago that depicts the night the Wall came down.

This drama-comedy stands out as an engaging political satire that allows viewers unfamiliar with that era to understand the basics of the event in a lighthearted atmosphere. The story begins with a small dog confidently crossing the northernmost checkpoint among the seven border crossings along the Berlin Wall, Bornholmer Straße, which shocks the East Berlin customs officers on the German Democratic Republic (East Germany, GDR in short) side and thus sets the film’s comedic tone.

Looking back, this landmark event of the late 20th century was, in fact, a comedy of serendipitous errors—propelled by Communist bureaucracy and historical momentum—giving it a comic-book-like quality.

While border officers pursue the dog, a live press conference airs on television between 6 and 7 p.m. Günter Schabowski, a member of the Politburo of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) and First Secretary of the SED district leadership in Berlin, announces a new set of border-crossing rules recently drawn up by the Ministry of the Interior and Ministry of State Security (Stasi). This new provision states that East Germans can apply to leave the country and move freely across all border checkpoints, even if they don’t meet the usual criteria. The rule is meant to take effect the following morning. However, Schabowski, who hadn’t been involved in the policy discussions and is out of the loop on specifics, glances at a note hastily handed to him by Egon Krenz, the interim leader who’s taken over from Erich Honecker (the former leader of GDR), and claims to a journalist from the Italian news agency ANSA that this cross-border regulation is now imperative. When asked about when it’d take effect, he hesitates before replying, “To the best of my knowledge, the law takes effect immediately, without delay.”

Don’t mistake Schabowski for a hero who intentionally advanced history or transformed the lives of East Germans. During that period of the Revolutions of 1989, every East German official knew that history was on the verge of turning a page, yet none dared or wished to take responsibility. Schabowski’s response was merely a manifestation of his laissez-faire governance and style of going with the flow. But that offhand remark caused a tremendous stir at border checkpoints.

The broader historical context can be explored in depth through sources like Wikipedia or exclusive documentaries. “Bornholmer Straße,” however, takes a unique perspective by focusing on the checkpoint that was the first to open and on Commander Harald Jäger and his subordinates—figures who are often overlooked in encyclopedic accounts.

After watching TV and hearing radio broadcasts, East Berlin residents begin gathering at the checkpoint, arriving empty-handed and confused. They simply want to check out the situation for themselves. If crossing really were possible, they hope to get to the other side of the Wall, catch a glimpse of their neighboring country and its people they hadn’t seen for 38 years, and then head home for the night. But according to work rules and protocol, Commander Jäger and his customs and border officials have no authorization to let people through without an explicit written notice. They are supposed to start processing travelers with valid documentation and passes only the following morning.

I once faced a similar awkward situation myself. Eleven years ago, while traveling in Central America, I tried to cross overland from southeastern Mexico into Belize, where a visa on arrival was permitted. By the time I arrived, it was already 8 p.m., and the immigration office had closed, with no one on duty until 9 a.m. the next morning. The guard on duty had no authority to let me through or to allow me to wait inside the basic office building. So, I had to spend the entire night sitting on the roadside curb.

Following the traditional narrative structure of conflict and resolution, the film uses parallel editing to gradually intensify the customs officers’ anxiety alongside the mounting frustration of the gathered citizens. On the other end of the phone in the customs building lies a bureaucratic maze, with officials passing the responsibility up the chain. The head of customs spends a sleepless night, issuing orders to keep border controls tight without giving concrete instructions, while cautiously reaching out to Stasi chief Erich Mielke, hoping for authoritative guidance.

Yet, no clear instructions from leadership ever arrived. Often, decisive historical moments are set into motion by righteous low-level officials who choose to step up to the plate—to ease up, just slightly, from rigid protocols. Facing this massive wall they’ve helped build and maintained order around for 38 years, Commander Jäger finally decides to risk his own career and open the gates to travelers without checking their IDs.

The film, centered on the experiences of border officers, largely concludes here, without exploring much beyond the checkpoint area. Historically, just a few hours later, people who called themselves “Mauerspechte” (Berlin Wall “woodpeckers”) began chipping away at the Wall with various tools, keeping pieces of it as souvenirs, or breaking through it to create informal crossing points. Gradually, the Berlin Wall crumbled.

“We have a worldview. Why can’t we see the world?” In the film, a high school history teacher, eager to visit her daughter in West Berlin, uses this question—first posed to her by a student—to challenge the border officials who’d previously enforced strict travel restrictions. So, what did the world around the Berlin Wall look like just before and after its fall? This comedy, which distills history to its essence and exaggerates its settings, can’t fully answer this question—nor can more famous films like “Good Bye Lenin!” or “The Lives of Others”. They’re compelling, even thought-provoking stories, but they aren’t exact mirrors of history.

Fortunately, beyond the pivotal moments captured in news footage, a few filmmakers of the time documented these events, focusing their cameras on unassuming corners and ordinary people not directly involved in tearing down the Wall.

Last month, the International Documentary Film Festival of Buenos Aires (Festival Internacional de Cine Documental Buenos Aires in Spanish or FIDBA in short) presented a program titled “35 Years Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall: What Now?” at Cine York, featuring five rarely-seen East German films. The selection not only depicted the immediate impact of German reunification but also illustrated the new “walls”—political, economic, or cultural—that continue to divide contemporary society.

In one of the films, “Winter Adé” (After Winter Comes Spring), director Helke Misselwitz embarks on a train journey across East Germany before reunification, interviewing women of different ages and backgrounds.

The short film “Tango Traum” (Tango Dream), also by Misselwitz, centers on a woman seated at a typewriter in her Prenzlauer Berg apartment, listening to tango music as she writes a screenplay for a film about tango and dreams.

One of the program’s most impactful pieces was “Die Mauer” (The Wall), an experimental documentary by Jürgen Böttcher. From Potsdamer Platz to the Brandenburg Gate, the camera captures the historical moment from various perspectives: on one side, journalists and tourists from around the world take photos, children sell pieces of the Wall to passers-by, and people celebrate New Year’s Eve in 1989; on the other side are abandoned subway stations and officials with blank looks on their faces.

“Unsere Kinder” (Our Children) portrays marginalized East German youth on the eve of reunification, including punks, goths, skinheads, and neo-Nazis. Two writers speak with these young people, comparing them to the youth of the Weimar era.

In “Verriegelte Zeit” (Locked Up Time), director Sibylle Schönemann revisits her past: in 1984, she was imprisoned after applying to emigrate, then moved to West Germany a year later through amnesty. After the Wall fell, she returned to East Germany to visit her former workplace at a state-run film studio and the prison where she’d been held. She even interviewed the Stasi officers who arrested her, the judge who handled her case, and a prison guard who’d been with her during her year-long detention.

How different was West Berlin, the city Schönemann fled to, from East Berlin, which had once oppressed and even imprisoned her? At the end of “Bornholmer Straße,” a young, beautiful woman crosses to “the other side” after Commander Jäger lifts the gate and allows people through. She strolls around, shares a beer with a young West Berliner who speaks the same language as her, and then returns to where she came from. Standing at the checkpoint gatehouse, where her soldier boyfriend had previously had to enforce the border restrictions under watchful eyes, she reconciles with him. After a kiss, she says, “The West smells bad.”

This reminds me of a writer friend who once conducted in-depth interviews with both a former dissident and a Stasi officer who’d been college classmates in East Germany—but later became bitter enemies. My friend asked the dissident, now middle-aged, “Do you regret having spent the best years of your life in East Germany?”

“No, not at all!”

“But wasn’t it oppressive there, without freedom?” my friend asked, puzzled.

“But we were young back then!” replied the former East German.

Indeed, no matter how good a system may be or how open a world might become, nothing compares to the passionate and irreplaceable youth we once had.