Based on a true story, Miguel Alexandre's two-part drama focuses on an East German woman and the fight for her children. Spring 1982: Sara Bender, living with her daughters Silvia and Sabine in the East German town of Erfurt, wants to marry her colleague Peter, but shortly before the wedding, her father is killed in a road accident. As the funeral takes place in West Germany, she isn't allowed to got there, so she starts planning to leave her communist home country forever. Trying to flee via Romania, she is caught by the secret service. After years in jail, Sara is ransomed by the West German government, but without her daughters. To draw the world's attention on her desperate situation, she starts demonstrating at the Berlin border crossing Checkpoint Charlie
Acting
Veronica Ferres carries every crushing moment with raw, exhausted precision.
Production
Painstaking period detail makes the Stasi feel terrifyingly present.
Director
Miguel Alexandre
Veronica Ferres
Sara Bender
Peter Kremer
Peter Koch
Filip Peeters
Richard Panter
Michael Schenk
Hans Wimpel
Karl Kranzkowski
Horst Seelig
Maria Ehrich
Silvia Bender
Elisa Schlott
Sabine Bender
Peggy Lukac
Marlene Engel
Winnie Böwe
Britta Sandfuß
Charlotte Schwab
Aenne Bubach
Julia Jäger
Regina Pries
Götz Schubert
Martin Pries
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Checkpoint Charlie became a symbol of division, but Sara Bender turned it into a stage for personal protest — one of few times an ordinary citizen hijacked Cold War iconography.
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