Balloon (2018)

Directed by: Michael Herbig | 125 minutes | drama, adventure, thriller | Actors: Friedrich Mücke, Karoline Schuch, David Kross, Alicia von Rittberg, Thomas Kretschmann, Jonas Holdenrieder, Tilman Döbler, Christian Näthe, Till Patz, Ben Teichmann, Ronald Kukulies, Emily Kusche, Sebastian Hülk, Gernot Kunert, Ulrich Brandhoff, Peter Trabner Bernd Michael Lade, Kai Ivo Baulitz, Bernd Stegemann, Antje Traue

‘Ballon’ is about two befriended families, Strelzyk and Wetzel, who want to flee from East Germany to the free West in the late 1970s. Offering their children a good future is paramount, but they themselves are still too young to resign themselves to the political climate of their homeland. They know that they take great risks in doing so, but the viewer is also aware of this at the start of this nail-biting exciting adventure: during the period that the Iron Curtain existed, no fewer than 75,000 East Germans tried in vain to flee – they were arrested and so did not make it to the West. Eight hundred people died trying…

Less than twenty minutes into the film, the Strelzyk family steps into the hot air balloon made by Günter Wetzel for the first time. The balloon turns out to be too small to carry two families, so the Strelzykjes decide to go alone. The youngest son, Fitscher, has been told that they are going on an overnight camping adventure, the eldest son, Frank, is at least as fanatical about the escape plans as father Peter. The attempt fails by a hair’s breadth. Due to the clouds, the fabric of the balloon becomes wet and therefore heavy and they descend too quickly. The flight stops just 200 meters before the border. The family has to head back home in a hurry, covering their tracks in the meantime.

What do you do in such a case? If for a while you pinned all your hopes on that one possibility of a better future and experienced first-hand how much danger you and your children were in? Right, you accept your fate because you don’t want to lose your kids if you put yourself behind bars. But ‘Balloon’ then lasts for over an hour, so as a viewer you can sense that the family will not let it go.

Whether or not you are aware of the outcome of this fact from German history, ‘Ballon’ is almost continuously exciting. The persistent threat of being discovered, the presence of children who in their innocence can be a little too candid with the wrong people, Frank’s infatuation with the girl next door, daughter of a Stasi employee… these are all elements in the story that the viewer has to offer. keep the events glued to the silver screen. In addition, we regularly see how close the Stasi (mainly represented by Thomas Kretschmann in a great role) actually are these families.

Filmmaker Michael Herbig is mainly known in his home country as a comedian and is therefore not immediately the first person you think of to film this daring escape attempt in a respectful way. Nevertheless, he surprises friend and foe with this compelling thriller. The film looks to be passable and the pace is consistently high. It must be strange if this does not become the German public favorite of the year.