SUMMARY

Thirty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a family's problems extend beyond the past.

In former communist East Germany, a renowned photographer and his writer father lived out their political resistance in very different ways. This film follows them as they confront each other thirty years after the fall of the Wall.

SYNOPSIS

What happens when a son finally opens up to his father about things that have remained unsaid for decades?

Father, Son, and the Price of Resistance is an intimate documentary about an East German family of artists whose lives were shaped and torn apart by two totalitarian regimes: the Nazi state and the communist East Germany, the GDR. Writer and sensitive linguistic rebel Gert Neumann and his son Aram Radomski, a photographer who captured the years of transition around the fall of the Wall, meet in front of the camera and struggle for closeness, truth and responsibility.

The family history begins with Margarete Neumann, a former Nazi supporter who later became a renowned communist novelist in the GDR.. Spanning three generations, it depicts the ongoing conflict between conformity and resistance. Encounters between surviving family members — a father and son — reveal the profound impact of ideological influences on personal relationships. With its rich archive of private films, photos, and letters, as well as sensitive camerawork during conversations, the film provides insight into both the inner life of a family and the history of the GDR. The film offers direct access to the echoes of experiences of violence in totalitarian states as living history.

CREDITS

Written and directed by: Götz Schauder
Producer and writer: Hubertus Siegert
Producer: Tuki Jencquel
Cinematography: Marcus Winterbauer

Completed: January 2026

Distribution: Piffl Medien GmbH

SUMMARY

Thirty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a family's problems extend beyond the past.

In former communist East Germany, a renowned photographer and his writer father lived out their political resistance in very different ways. This film follows them as they confront each other thirty years after the fall of the Wall.

SYNOPSIS

What happens when a son finally opens up to his father about things that have remained unsaid for decades?

Father, Son, and the Price of Resistance is an intimate documentary about an East German family of artists whose lives were shaped and torn apart by two totalitarian regimes: the Nazi state and the communist East Germany, the GDR. Writer and sensitive linguistic rebel Gert Neumann and his son Aram Radomski, a photographer who captured the years of transition around the fall of the Wall, meet in front of the camera and struggle for closeness, truth and responsibility.

The family history begins with Margarete Neumann, a former Nazi supporter who later became a renowned communist novelist in the GDR.. Spanning three generations, it depicts the ongoing conflict between conformity and resistance. Encounters between surviving family members — a father and son — reveal the profound impact of ideological influences on personal relationships. With its rich archive of private films, photos, and letters, as well as sensitive camerawork during conversations, the film provides insight into both the inner life of a family and the history of the GDR. The film offers direct access to the echoes of experiences of violence in totalitarian states as living history.