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FATHER, SON, AND THE PRICE OF RESISTANCE

Directed by Götz Schauder

Written by Götz Schauder, Hubertus Siegert

Produced by Hubertus Siegert, Tuki Jencquel

Starring Gert Neumann and Aram Radomski

A production by S.U.M.O. FILM

In co-production with ZDF / 3SAT

Supported by MOIN Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein, German Film Fund (DFFF), MV Filmförderung, and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM)

© S.U.M.O. Film, ZDF, 2026

Distributed by Piffl Medien GmbH: office@pifflmedien.de
Press contact: Nicole Kühner hallo@kulturmeisterei.com

Gert Neumann and Aram Radomski © Mathias Bothor
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Synopsis (short)

The images Aram Radomski captured at the Leipzig Monday demonstration on October 9, 1989 made headlines around the world—and helped bring about the fall of East Germany. But for his father, the dissident writer Gert Neumann, those images still feel like a betrayal.

Father and son haven’t spoken in years. Through intimate video messages and personal documents, they cautiously try to reconnect. Caught between political beliefs, family wounds, and the experience of state persecution, they search for understanding—and maybe a way to meet again.

Gert Neumann ©S.U.M.O. FILM
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GBR Family Apartment ©S.U.M.O. FILM
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Gert Neumann (b. 1942 in Heilsberg, East Prussia)

Son of writer Margarete Neumann and father of underground filmmaker Aram Radomski.

Gert Neumann grew up on the outskirts of Berlin and was initially trained as a tractor operator. In the early 1960s, he moved to Neubrandenburg with his teenage sweetheart Monika Radomski, he worked as a metalworker, and began writing in a young authors working group led by his mother.

In 1967, as a father of three, he went to Leipzig to study literature. After showing solidarity with the Prague student protests, he was expelled in 1969 and separated from his family.

Until the end of the GDR, he remained under surveillance by the Stasi, worked as a metalworker, and was denied permission to publish. Nevertheless, from the late 1970s onward he published in the West, including The Guilt of Words (1979), Eleven O’Clock (1981), and The Clandestinity of the Boiler Cleaners (1988).

He was awarded the Uwe Johnson Prize in 1999 for his novel Anschlag.

Aram Radomski ©S.U.M.O. FILM
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Aram Radomski ©S.U.M.O. FILM
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Aram Radomski (b. 1963 in Neubrandenburg)
Son of Gert Neumann and Monika Radomski.

He grew up with two younger siblings in Groß Nemerow, raised by his single mother. Trained as a tractor operator, he became interested in photography and Super 8 film at an early age. At 16, the Stasi approached him to inform on his father—he refused. In 1982, at 19, he was arrested, abused in custody, and sentenced to six months in prison, where he was forced into labor at the Zeithain youth detention center.

After his release, he became part of the artist and bohemian scene in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg, working as a photographer and running a repro workshop for opposition groups. From 1987 onward, he secretly worked for West German television, documenting abuses in the GDR. His underground footage of the Leipzig Monday demonstration on October 9, 1989, was broadcast worldwide.

After reunification, he received numerous honors, including the Bambi Awards (2009) and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany (2018). Today, he lives in Berlin, working as a photographer and designer.

Gert Neumann ©S.U.M.O. FILM
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Aram Radomski with his partner Anne Müller ©S.U.M.O. FILM
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Synopsis (long)
The footage Aram Radomski secretly filmed for West German television during the Leipzig Monday demonstration on October 9, 1989, was seen around the world. Four weeks later, the Berlin Wall fell. To many, he is a hero—but to his father, the writer Gert Neumann, he remains an “agent of the West.”

The conflict stretches across three generations. Shaped by the contradictory life of his own mother—who went from Nazi supporter to GDR author—Gert develops a form of radical artistic resistance, ultimately leaving his family behind. His son, however, experiences that very act as a betrayal. To this day, the two stand opposed, holding fundamentally irreconcilable interpretations of the past.

The film brings father and son—who no longer have contact—into a dialogue from a distance. Through video messages and images, they respond to one another, opening up a space where memory, hurt, and resistance can be re-examined and made visible. An intimate portrait of a family in which German history continues to resonate into the present.

Director Götz Schauder with the two protagonists, Aram Radomski and Gert Neumann

Written and directed by Götz Schauder

Götz Schauder, born in Göttingen, studied film at the University of Art and Design Offenbach. Starting in 2001, his documentary films were screened at international festivals. Since 2004, he has worked as a film and television writer.

In 2015, he began collaborating with producer Hubertus Siegert as a writer and editor. Schauder’s first internationally distributed feature-length documentary for cinema, Conductors! Every Move Counts, was released in German cinema in 2018 and broadcast internationally by Arte, NHK, and distributed by Film Movement in New York.

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Director’s Statement 

The images of Aram Radomski fascinated me because they offer a singular, idiosyncratic view of a country on the verge of disappearing—a country I never experienced myself: the communist German Democratic Republic. The language of his father, the writer Gert Neumann, was equally compelling to me. Like a message in a bottle, it preserves the atmosphere of speaking—or rather, of not speaking—within a dictatorship, carrying it into the present and the future.

As a photographer and a writer, both revolve around questions of perception and around aesthetics as a way of accessing the world. And yet, more than three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, they still fail to arrive at a shared understanding of their own history as father and son.

The deeper I delve into their biographies, the clearer it becomes how profoundly they are shaped by a past that has never been resolved: the long aftermath of National Socialism and the war within families—both in East and West. A generation of fathers who themselves grew up without stable father figures often remained strangers to their own children.

The confrontation with the Nazi past of their parents also culminates in 1968—on both sides of the divided Germany—as a generational conflict. For Gert Neumann, this becomes concrete in the life of his mother Margarete Neumann, whose transformation from Nazi supporter to GDR author drives him toward the search for an unadorned, poetic language. He defends this stance during the Prague Spring against any form of ideological appropriation—and is expelled from the Leipzig Institute of Literature as a result.

transformation from a Nazi sympathizer to a GDR writer drives him to search for an unadorned, poetic language. In the context of the Prague Spring, he defends his stance against any ideological co-optation and is expelled from the Leipzig Literary Institute as a result.

At the same time, his family falls apart. He separates from the mother of his three young children—Aram is the eldest—from whom he feels he does not receive enough support in his literary resistance and who sees herself as a close confidante of his own mother, Margarete.

From this constellation arises a family conflict that smolders unresolved between father and son to this day. Aram admires his father’s resistance, which opens up an alternative to his mother’s more conformist world. At the same time, he cannot accept—even as an adult man—that his father left the family. For him, this

At the same time, his family falls apart. He separates from the mother of his three young children—Aram, the eldest—feeling that she does not sufficiently support his literary resistance, while she, in turn, sees herself as a close ally of his own mother, Margarete.

Out of this constellation emerges a family conflict that continues to smolder unresolved between father and son to this day. Aram admires his father’s resistance, which offered him an alternative to the more conformist world of his mother. At the same time, even as an adult, he cannot accept that his father left the family. For him, that decision remains inseparable from loss.

The father, on the other hand, believes he cannot protect his children through conformity, but only through the consistent rejection of dictatorship. That Aram fundamentally does not question either the stance of his grandmother or his mother’s adaptation remains a painful point for him.

In this way, the question of whether one sides with the mother or the father becomes an irresolvable conflict—an inheritance of German dictatorship history that continues to shape the present.

That both father and son speak to me with great openness about their relationship—marked by mistrust—while at the same time having completely cut off direct contact with each other, moved me deeply. In both of them, there is a strong longing for understanding and to be seen.

By showing them video recordings of each other and inviting them to respond from a distance, a space for reflection emerges. Not an attempt at reconciliation, but an opportunity to see each other differently—vulnerable, contradictory, unfiltered.

It is only through recognizing the wounds of the other that a new understanding becomes possible. How far this attempt reaches—and where it fails—is the core of this film. It tells, in exemplary form, of families in both East and West in which history is not over, but continues to resonate.

Producer Hubertus Siegert

Hubertus Siegert is a writer and producer of feature-length documentary films. His works, such as *Berlin Babylon*, *Beyond Punishment*, and *Eine deutsche Partei*, combine social relevance with cinematic artistry. In the style of Direct Cinema, his work is characterized by long-term observations and political analyses of the times. He is currently working on a film about AI.

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CREDITS

Director: Götz Schauder
Screenplay: Götz Schauder, Hubertus Siegert
Producers: Hubertus Siegert, Tuki Jencquel
Cinematography: Marcus Winterbauer
Distributor: Piffl Medien GmbH