In 1987, Suse's friend Matthias and her best friend Susanne try to escape from East Germany. Their flight fails: Matthias and Susanne are imprisoned, interrogated by the secret intelligence agency, the Stasi, psychologically tortured, and forced into betrayal. Suse remains behind alone; later she is forced to leave college because of her friends' escape attempt. Not until sixteen years later do the three meet again. They have now drifted as far apart as their lives together were once close. Still firmly in the grip of the events of the past, Matthias, as a witness of those times, conducts tours for visitors through the prison where he and Susanne were once jailed. Susanne, who never wanted to be confronted with the past again, works as a nurse in western Berlin. Suse, with her husband and their three children, is the only one who still lives in Pankow, the district where the three spent their youth.
Before they see each other again, they return to sites of the past: Matthias and Susanne walk once again through the forest on the Czech border where they were arrested; Susanne stands in her old prison cell. Suse again enters the auditorium from which the Stasi officers once picked her up. The film shows how painful the memories still are after all the years and how love and friendship turned into deep distrust. "What does one say at a moment like this?" Matthias asks one of his old friends, who have become strangers to one another – except for the remnant in their past that ties them together.
Production: Credofilm GmbH (Berlin), ZDF, HFF (Potsdam)
Screenplay: Thorsten Trimpop
Cinematographer: Hanno Moritz Kunow
Sound: Sebastian Kleinloh
Composer: Michael Jakumeit
Sound design: Florian Beck
Editor: Sarah J. Levin
Format/screen ratio: 35mm, 1:1.66, Color
Running time: 95 min., 25 frames/sec.
Language: German
