The Burning Wall
Dissent and Opposition behind the Berlin Wall
a film by Hava Kohav Beller

(Lesen auf Deutsch)

A dozen years after the collapse of East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall, Hava Beller movingly investigates the profoundly contemporary dilemma of individual resistance within a totalitarian state.

The Stasi, the secret police that employed over 100,000 agents (many of them ordinary citizens), assembled files on one third of the population.  Former dissidents tell kafkaesque stories of psychological warfare they endured, while former Stasi agents candidly detail their techniques for destroying the lives of their opponents.

The film depicts the developing opposition from the first stirring of single acts of resistance by individuals, through an emerging dissident movement, all the way to the astounding ground swell of defiance that brought down the Berlin Wall and resulted in the collapse of the GDR regime.

Major funding for “The Burning Wall” has been provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Other funds have come from the Soros Documentary Fund/OSI; The New York Council for the Humanities; RIAS Berlin Kommission; The German Information Center, NY;  The Robert Bosch & Korber Foundations; The Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation; The John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; Kanter Plaut Foundation; The “Omina Freundshilfe” Foundation, and the Four Oaks Foundation.