Sun seekers Sonnensucher

Streaming video - 2014

A socialist story of "atoms for peace" and compulsory labor in an East German uranium mine under Soviet control. Banned at Soviet insistence, it impresses even today with its political complexity, variety of characters and realistic portrayal of daily work in a forbidden zone of the industrial landscape. Sun seekers was banned in 1958 at the urging of the USSR, in part because it is about Soviet-German relations and the mining of uranium to support the nuclear arms race in East Germany's Wismut region. Encouraged by the "thaw" promised by the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, in this film Konrad Wolf presents a highly dramatic and differentiated view of the Nazi past, Stalinist political practices and the... energetic chaos of the early postwar period. The film's style combines Wolf's Russian sensibilities with echoes of Italian neo-realism and Pabst's Kameradschaft (1931). Releasing this banned film became one of Wolf's first priorities when a new regime took over in the GDR in 1972. In 1989, the film was revived again along with other banned films, as part of DEFA's best 'if thwarted' tradition. more