Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance after the Holocaust

Joerg Hejkal is a Cologne-based photographer who fled the German Democratic Republic in 1984 after he discovered that his father was spying on him for the Stasi (East German Secret Police). Director Susanne Jaeger chronologically reconstructs Joerg's life story up to his arrival in West Germany. She uses a swift montage of archival footage, interviews and dramatizations, and together with Joerg Hejkal she re-visits the past key locations. A voiceover reads from the many reports Hejkal's father delivered to the Stasi. Upon discovering this, Joerg crossed the border into Yugoslavia while on holiday in Hungary and into a void, which took years until he gained his freedom. Along with the film crew Joerg retraces his escape route, once again ending up in the Berlin prison where he was detained for 2 years. In the early 1980s, through contacts in the East-Berlin punk scene (archival footage), he found cohorts who helped him to enter the American Embassy. This culminated in a successful escort to West Germany. Now he sits on the couch with his former housemate, whose Stasi affiliation Hejkal was unaware of at that time. The filmmaker also interviews the then West-German ambassador, the GDR lawyer who carried out the negotiations and Hejkal's father, who is still living in the East of Germany, together with his wife.