Ballon

How two families engineer their escape from Communist East Germany to the West is excellent on all fronts: a gripping story line, a great director and actors, and the supporting soundtrack. The suspense builds and continues throughout the movie. Plenty of twists and turns to keep the audience engaged.

There isn't much bad to write about Ballon. I don't know what people could dislike about this movie. To me it was entertaining, with quite a lot of suspense once you're into the story, a good cast (even the kids), and it's all nicely shot. I understand everybody was suspicious of the Stasi at that time, your best friend could betray you, but in this case I think they exaggerated a bit in order to make it more suspensful. But the suspense was the good thing about the story, plus the fact that it's based on a true story which made it even more appealing. It's one of the better German movies I've seen lately, certainly worth a watch if you like escape movies.

This film is based on a true story and recounts an evasion attempt, from GDR to FRG, in 1979 during the Cold War, with two families ballooning over a heavily guarded area, starting from Pößneck, a small town within Thuringia, knowing that the shortest distance as the crow flies to reach Bavaria and the Western Bloc is about 25 km. We may see this movie as a commemoration of the manifold unsuccessful attempts and also, in slight advance, of the 30 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the German reunification (1990).

It's well played, suspenseful and points up two main issues: 1) The secret preparation of such an expedition, in a country which is supposed to be a republic if one refers naively to the acronym GDR, and which turns out to be a dictatorship controlling every gesture and every word, thanks to the Stasi. 2) Leaving those who are not part of the expedition and who stay in the GDR such as grandparents or friends, in order to start a new life, ex nihilo. Otherwise, even though it might be a part of the same true story, the episode of the cigarette pack and the American embassy is too showy and, in my humble opinion, pollutes the film.

Finally, despite a decade studying German, from college to the end of my studies, I am not sensitive enough to the subtleties of variations of accents between the different Länder, contrary to sh_bronstein, in his review dating from November 2018. Although his rating is harsh, I find that his review is relevant but does not concern me. Fortunately somehow.

Great Actors, thrilling action, phantastic film music. Director Michael Herbig finds the right tonality to tell this true story. Must See!

An enjoyable German thriller telling of a family's attempt to escape from east Germany via hot air balloon, no less. It's one of those true "stranger than fiction" tales that plays out in a surprisingly engrossing and suspenseful way. The action and scale are low key, but the ballooning scenes are handled adroitly and the scenes of the Stasi and their investigations keep the suspense going. Nothing to dislike about a well-made thriller that actually thrills.