Barbara

Christian Petzold : 2012

It is the summer of 1980. Barbara begins work as a pediatrician in a small hospital far away from everything in a provincial backwater. She was transferred for disciplinary reasons, away from the capital East Berlin, due to her request for a departure permit from the GDR to the West. Joerg, her lover, a foreign trade employee whom she met on a spring night in East Berlin, comes over for secret meetings with Barbara. He is working on the preparation of their flight, the Baltic Sea is one possibility. Barbara has been allocated a simple apartment. At the hospital she works attentively with the patients, but remains distant from colleagues. There is nothing holding her here anymore. Barbara is cold, within herself, withdrawing from everyone and everything around her. That summer, her existence is disturbed. She meets a physician, André, who was also transferred for disciplinary reasons. André confuses Barbara. Did they put him on to her? Or has he fallen in love with her? As Barbara begins to lose control – of herself, her love, of her life – the day of the planned escape is imminent.