This film came as bonus DVD with yesterday's Focus magazine, which prompted me to buy it for the first time - and yes, 3.20 were well invested.
While documentaries about the Third Reich or World War 2 typically mix original, period footage with interview snippets, this film contains only very little period material, although the events are only 20 years ago.. but apart from a Dutch film reporter, assigned to report on beavers, who traveled to Leipzig to stealthily record the political unrest, other snippets (possibly from surveillance cameras) were of so bad quality that I was glad they didn't use more of that. Instead, the events leading to the Monday demonstrations in Leipzig 1989, and ultimately to the fall of the Wall and the Soviet bloc, were re-enacted.
While the documentary style was kept (no "movie roles" with detailed personal drama), the details are of course scripted and fictitious. But the end product (complete with brief interviews with participants of the events) impressed me as well done, convincing in the stories, and not boring to watch.
Most focus goes on the demo participants, but the "other side" is also featured - police, army, paratroopers, preparing for a "war" which luckily didn't happen.
While documentaries about the Third Reich or World War 2 typically mix original, period footage with interview snippets, this film contains only very little period material, although the events are only 20 years ago.. but apart from a Dutch film reporter, assigned to report on beavers, who traveled to Leipzig to stealthily record the political unrest, other snippets (possibly from surveillance cameras) were of so bad quality that I was glad they didn't use more of that. Instead, the events leading to the Monday demonstrations in Leipzig 1989, and ultimately to the fall of the Wall and the Soviet bloc, were re-enacted.
While the documentary style was kept (no "movie roles" with detailed personal drama), the details are of course scripted and fictitious. But the end product (complete with brief interviews with participants of the events) impressed me as well done, convincing in the stories, and not boring to watch.
Most focus goes on the demo participants, but the "other side" is also featured - police, army, paratroopers, preparing for a "war" which luckily didn't happen.
