The Lives of Others — VOC Anti-Communist Film Festival

Join VOC for a showing of The Lives of Others Saturday, October 3, at the Victims of Communism Museum. Part of VOC's first annual Anti-Communist Film Festival, The Lives of Others is set in 1984 East Berlin, following an agent of the secret police conducting surveillance on a writer and his lover, who finds himself increasingly absorbed in their lives. Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, this film is the winner of the 2007 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year.

As noted film critic Roger Ebert wrote, “The Lives of Others is a powerful but quiet film, constructed of hidden thoughts and secret desires. It begins with Wiesler teaching a class in the theory and practice of interrogation; one chilling detail is that suspects are forced to sit on their hands, so that the chair cushion can be saved for possible use by bloodhounds. It shows how the Wall finally fell, not with a bang, but because of whispers.”

The Lives of Others is rated R.