Die Mediocren

A family in East Germany finds millions in soon-to-be-worthless marks during 1990's reunification, and takes what they can carry.

Outside Time is the second feature film of Andreas Kleinert, a German director who grew up in the GDR and who started making films at the time of the fall of the Wall. The film is set in a small town somewhere in Brandenburg, a place which is rapidly falling "outside time"; since it cannot keep pace with the changes brought about by unification and the transformation of the former GDR. The Russian troops stationed there have withdrawn and their barracks have turned into rat-infested ruins; the intercity trains do not stop there any more and even the regional railway link to Berlin is going to be suspended. Most young people are leaving. When Sophie introduces her lover to her mother and her brother, Sergej becomes embroiled in the incestuous tensions underlying the relationship between Sophie, her brother, Georg, and her mother. The arrival of the Russian implodes the claustrophobic sham existence that held this dysfunctional family together.

In 1989, thirteen GDR scientists and technicians set off from East Berlin to the Georg Forster research station in the Antarctic. During their expedition the Berlin Wall fell on November 9th. Cut off from the images that go around the world, the men can only experience the historical events passively. When they returned in the spring of 1991, their homeland was a foreign country. The documentary reconstructs the thoughts and feelings of the East German researchers on the basis of eyewitness accounts, diary excerpts, letters, film material, grandiose landscape shots from the location of the action and unique photos to make the consequences of the events tens of thousands of kilometers away on the small GDR expedition in the middle of the eternal ice tangible.

Journalist Daniela Dahn interviews the East-German author Christa Wolf during the German reunification: reflections on history, changing politics, life and work.