Enemy of the State

Enemy of the State

Annekatrin Hendel

DE
2011
Documentary
96’
Focus

»I can always see the bloody West-German questions coming a mile off.«
Paul Gratzik

An angry old man in a rowing boat. The poet and dramatist Paul Gratzik (1935-2018), swears at the director when she asks him about his past as an unofficial collaborator with the GDR’s Ministry for State Security (MfS). After unequivocally distancing himself from the figure of an »informer«, he believes that the whole capitalist community hasn’t had enough abuse thrown at it and that, seen in this light, it was probably a mistake to have »kicked the Stasi in the balls.« The film is thrown back and forth between these two poles, a massive memory machine. Here, two people go to the quarry of the repressed, to the bone mill of refusal, quarreling and mourning. We hear from Gratzik himself, his friends and companions, his MfS commanding officer (who unashamedly fits the stereotype), and from his ex-wives and children. A biography bursting with contradictions is told in painted imagery that does not so much illustrate the memories as atmospherically condense them, and in the film images of Johann Feindt the rage, inner conflict and loneliness become almost painfully insistent. They show someone who was a child refugee, worker, fired literature student, highly praised poet, unofficial collaborator with the Stasi, and finally dissident. He receives permission to print his subversive novel Transportpaule from the Stasi as a reward for loyal service, which he increasingly perceives as »betrayal of the fatherland«, quits the service, confesses his secret to his friends and thus becomes a non-personality and a grumbling, but not bitter, Uckermark hermit in the East.
Grit Lemke


Awards for Vaterlandsverräter
Grimme Award 2013 | Peace Film Award – Unabhängiges Film Fest Osnabrück 2011

Director / Script

Annekatrin Hendel

Cinematography

ohann Feindt, Jule Catinka Cramer, Martin Langner, Can Elbasi

Editing

Jörg Hauschild

Sound

Paul Oberle, Nic Nagel, Ludwig Bestehorn

Music

Louis Rastig

With

Paul Gratzik, Matthias Hering,
Ernstgeorg Hering, Ursula Karusseit, Raphaela Schröder, Günter WenzeL

Production

Holly Tischman, IT WORKS!, ZDF, ARTE

Contact

Salzgeber

Annekatrin Hendel

Annekatrin Hendel was born in Berlin and is a producer, screenwriter and director. In 2004 she founded the production company IT WORKS! Medien GmbH, of which she is the managing director. The company’s very first production Dead, at the Moment won numerous awards. Since then she has been making challenging feature films, short films and documentaries such as Made In GDR (Olaf Kaiser, 2006) and AlleAlle (Pepe Planitzer, 2007). Her artistic work is influenced by her belonging to the »last generation […] that came of age in the GDR«. She sees this as »an artistic potential threatened with extinction«.


Films by Annekatrin Hendel
Schönheit & Vergänglichkeit 2019 | Familie Brasch 2018 | Fünf Sterne 2017 | Fassbinder 2015 | Anderson 2014 | FLAKE – Mein Leben 2011 | Chiquita for Ever 1999