Sandra Hüller in former GDR banknote scam

This choral comedy starring Sandra Hüller tells the story of a great scam orchestrated by a group of unemployed workers in the former GDR, who take advantage of the general disorganization of reunification to get their hands on “the people’s money”.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the German authorities decided to store all of the GDR’s banknotes in a former bunker, the equivalent of 3,000 tons of notes, for a total of more than 100 billion marks. German director Natja Brunckhorst has turned this episode of history into a spirited comedy starring Sandra Hüller. The Great Deal hits theaters on August 28.

Robert and Maren live in the working-class district of a small town in the former GDR. The factory that provides a living for a large part of the population is laying off workers. Robert is part of the cart. However, it is with joy and good humor that the family shares festive moments with the neighbors in the communal garden at the end of this scorching summer. Volker, who has gone to try his luck in the West, has just returned, coldly received by Maren, who is hiding a secret from him.

At the same time, trucks are coming and going to the military warehouse in the area. Robert, Volker and Maren decide to go and take a look with the help of Robert’s uncle, who works in maintenance on the site. At the end of a perilous expedition, they discover with amazement that piles of banknotes from the former GDR are stored at the bottom of an underground gallery, before destruction. The jackpot is no longer worth anything. The quartet, helped by the entire neighborhood, will nevertheless succeed in transforming it into treasure thanks to a clever scheme.

Through this adventure, the German director depicts the former GDR in the year following the fall of the Wall, during which an atmosphere of chaos reigned, but also of joy, a feeling of liberation shared by the population and very joyfully embodied by this small group of friends from the same neighborhood.

“A great time”, as Yannek, the tagger son of Maren and Robert, says. “There was hope, then no hope, fears, but also opportunities. I met many people who told me: ‘It was the best time of my life’!” says the director.

Does money buy happiness? This question runs through the film with an almost magical representation at the beginning, the band of nickel-plated feet sprawled like children in piles of banknotes. As the story progresses, the relationship with money is structured, to the point of a reflection on what it could be used for.

A journey that moves from utopia to a more realistic and collective project, this old communist value to which the protagonists seem to remain attached. “Money is freedom in cash” : this quote which closes the film fits perfectly with what the members of this small community experience.

The Great Deal also tells the story of a love triangle, the singularity of which echoes the broader story of the reunification of Germany, forced to imagine the modalities of its reunification. “If we can’t define what we three are, how are we going to start over?”Maren asks the two men who love her. A sentence that rings true for their love story as well as for the story of a Germany that needs to be reconciled.

The love triangle seems here again to find a resolution in the collective, with this image of the whole family falling asleep in the same bed, an intimate figure of reunification, where everyone must be able to find a place in a common space to be reinvented.

The German director, who began her career as an actress at a very young age, played the lead role in the film Me, Christiane F., 13 years old, drug addict, prostitute, In this second feature film, he paints a portrait of the former GDR tinged with nostalgia.

Questioning family and societal models, the film deconstructs the myths of communism, while defending a certain idea of ​​the collective, inherited from this same model. “We worked to hold the world together, but not ours, that of others,” regrets one of the characters, stunned to learn that the factory where he worked for decades actually supplied spare parts to a well-known Swedish company.

This choral film, which would have gained from being a little tighter, is served by a troupe of actors where each plays his part around a luminous Sandra Hüller. The careful staging, with well-composed shots and sets, costumes and the famous Trabant, rightly evokes the aesthetic and the very particular spirit of this singular world, born in the former “Eastern bloc”, and dead with its disappearance.

Gender : Comedy
Realizationrice : Natja Brunckhorst
Actors: Sandra Hüller, Max Riemelt, Ronald Zehrfeld
Country : Germany
Duration : 1h56
Exit : August 28 2024
Distributer : KMBO

Synopsis : 1990, in the midst of the complex reunification of the two Germanys, workers in the same former GDR neighborhood find themselves unemployed. One day, they discover the location of thousands of East German banknotes destined to be destroyed. They have three days to seize them and convert the money into Deutsche Mark, setting up the deal that will change their lives.