Die Frau vom Checkpoint Charlie (2007)

In 1982, Sara Bender lives in Erfurt with her two daughters, Silvia (11) and Sabine (9), and works at an electronics combine. Because of some critical remarks about the regime made by their mother, the girls have already begun to suffer discrimination at school and in sports. Sara wants to marry her boyfriend and colleague, Peter Koch. On the way to the wedding, her father, who lives in West Germany, is involved in a car accident on the autobahn near Helmstedt. The wedding is initially called off. Sara wants to visit her injured father in the hospital, but as a critical-minded East German citizen, she is forbidden to travel to the West. Her father dies without Sara getting to see him again. She then applies for permission to emigrate, but her application is rejected, and she faces reprisals at work. Her longing for freedom grows, and she dares to attempt an escape with her daughters across the green border from Romania to Yugoslavia. A colleague advises her to contact a man named Marek. He gives Sara a tip on how to cross the border. However, the Stasi, which has bugged her apartment, gets wind of the plan and foils the escape. Sara and her children are arrested in Romania and taken to East Berlin. There, the family is separated at the airport. The daughters are initially placed in a children's home in Dresden. Sara herself is held in pretrial detention. Her boyfriend Peter, whom she had been about to marry shortly before, turns out to be a traitor, working for the Stasi against her. Sara is eventually sentenced to three years in Hoheneck women's prison. After two years in prison, Sara is finally bought out by the West German government in 1984 and deported to West Germany. However, her two daughters are left behind and from then on live with a foster family loyal to the regime. Through a deceptive ploy, Sara was made to agree to the revocation of her parental rights shortly before her deportation. But Sara does not want to live in West Germany without her children. From the outset, she fights to have them allowed to leave as well. Her efforts fail because of resistance from the East German authorities, who want to make an example of her. Disappointed, she realizes that she cannot expect any real support from the West German government either, because it does not want to jeopardize its delicate relations with East Berlin. Sara sees her only chance in making her case public. She turns to the International Society for Human Rights and receives support from journalist Richard Panter. Holding a sign that reads “Give me back my children!”, Sara regularly demonstrates at Checkpoint Charlie, and Richard makes sure images of the protest go around the world. The East German leadership, which sees this as a serious provocation, tries to intimidate her aggressively. Sara receives anonymous threatening phone calls and is attacked in West Berlin by Stasi agents, who injure her and threaten to kill her. The West German government also asks her to stop her public actions. But Sara refuses to be deterred. Through smuggled letters and tape recordings, she keeps in touch with her daughters, and all three hope for a happy reunion in West Germany. Sara's many efforts, however, repeatedly run up against bureaucratic resistance. Finally, in the summer of 1986, she travels to the CSCE conference in Helsinki to protest the injustice done to her before the eyes of the world. When she tries to meet West German Foreign Minister Genscher there, she walks into a Stasi ambush and narrowly escapes an assassination attempt. Her daughters are told that Sara died in a car accident. They therefore agree to be adopted by their foster family. But after accidentally seeing a report on West German television about their mother's tireless protests, the girls learn the truth. With the help of their foster mother, who finally takes pity on them, the East German authorities ultimately approve the girls' departure for West Berlin, where they are finally reunited with their mother on August 25, 1986.