\u00bbI can always see the bloody West-German questions coming a mile off.\u00ab
\nPaul Gratzik<\/p>\n
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 \u00bbinformer\u00ab, 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 \u00bbkicked the Stasi in the balls.\u00ab 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 \u00bbbetrayal of the fatherland\u00ab, 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.
\nGrit Lemke<\/p>\n
Awards for Vaterlandsverr\u00e4ter<\/strong>
\nGrimme Award<\/em> 2013 | Peace Film Award \u2013 Unabh\u00e4ngiges Film Fest Osnabr\u00fcck<\/em> 2011<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":8342,"template":"","movie_year":[304],"movie_genre":[85],"movie_cat":[242],"festival":[300],"class_list":["post-6657","movie","type-movie","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","movie_year-304","movie_genre-documentary-en","movie_cat-focus-en-2020","festival-2020-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n