The GDR Complex

Young, gay, and conservative, Mario Roellig is a witnesses to the atrocities committed in the GDR. He guides groups through the Stasi prison where he was once incarcerated. A love affair with a politician from West-Berlin made him try to flee to the West, but he got unlucky and was detained at the famous Stasi prison Berlin Hohenschoenhausen. Today Roellig confronts GDR aficionados and is also confronted by people who still believe in social utopias. And he tries to overcome his hurt feelings: Arriving in the West, he had to realize that his lover had a straight family life with wife and kids. The film unveils a strange atmosphere of misunderstandings and failures to communicate. The process of coming to terms with the past has just begun.

Keywords

  • Exclusive Docs: New Perspectives
  • Jochen Hick
  • Label: docfilm42
  • Made in Germany
  • Politics: Human Rights
  • Queer Being in Dictatorships
  • Screen: Germany
  • Sooner Exclusives
  • Topic: Oral History
  • Berlin
  • gdr
  • history

Actors

  • Mario Roellig

Director

  • Jochen Hick

Documentary, Queer


1h 30min


12 FSK

DE


FR

IT

PL

SV

DE

ES

PT

EN

Germany
2016
The moving life story of Mario Röllig, who fell in love with a gay West German politician in the mid-80s and was imprisoned for it.

The moving life story of Mario Röllig, who fell in love with a gay West German politician in the mid-80s and was imprisoned for it.


Young, gay, and conservative, Mario Roellig is a witnesses to the atrocities committed in the GDR. He guides groups through the Stasi prison where he was once incarcerated.


A love affair with a politician from West-Berlin made him try to flee to the West, but he got unlucky and was detained at the famous Stasi prison Berlin Hohenschoenhausen.


Today Roellig confronts GDR aficionados and is also confronted by people who still believe in social utopias. And he tries to overcome his hurt feelings: Arriving in the West, he had to realize that his lover had a straight family life with wife and kids.


The film unveils a strange atmosphere of misunderstandings and failures to communicate. The process of coming to terms with the past has just begun.

Festivals

Cast & Crew