As PAN'S LABYRINTH was picking by Academy Awards for Best Art Direction, Cinematography and Makeup, it surprised some when Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's first feature film walked away with the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. More traditional Oscar fare than Guillermo del Toro's breathtaking fantasy, THE LIVES OF OTHERS has the intelligence and emotion of great drama, but the urgency of a top-notched political thriller. Set a few years before the Berlin Wall fell, the film investigates the overreaching practice of the East German government to spy on its citizens.
Top spy Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe, FUNNY GAMES) tells his superior Anton Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur, AMEN) that he suspects famed playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch, BLAKC BOOK) of subversive actions. Corrupt minister Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme, DOWNFALL) has a vendetta against outspoken artists and desperately wants to find anything that can bring Dreyman down. So Wiesler is called on to lead a day-and-night spy operation on the devoted socialist Dreyman and his girlfriend Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck, THE GOOD SHEPHERD), a highly admired stage actress. Dreyman's friend Paul Hauser (Hans-Uwe Bauer, GOOD BYE LENIN!) is quite outspoken against the practices of the Ministry of State Security, known as the Stasi, especially in light of the blacklisting of their friend Albert Jerska (Volkmar Kleinert), a once famed stage director who hasn't been allowed to work in nearly 10 years. A tragedy finally motivates Dreyman to speak out against the lies of the Stasi in an expose article to be smuggled into West Germany and printed in a magazine there.
