SYNOPSIS

Gert Neumann is a writer. His son Aram Radomski is a photographer. As a twenty-year-old, Aram secretly documented the mass protests of 9 October 1989 in Leipzig for West German television—images that went around the world and became part of the visual memory of the Peaceful Revolution. His father spent decades in the GDR fighting for the freedom of language, with severe personal and familial consequences.

Their conflict is rooted in a three-generation history. Aram’s grandmother was a devoted supporter of the Third Reich in her youth before becoming a celebrated emerging author in the newly founded GDR. From this contradictory maternal biography, Gert Neumann developed a radical form of artistic resistance within East Germany. He pursued this path with uncompromising consistency—ultimately at the cost of his family. For his son, this decision became an experience of abandonment and betrayal.

While Aram is widely regarded as a hero of the Peaceful Revolution, his father still calls him an “agent of the West.” For years, father and son have had no contact.

The Price of Resistance brings them into a dialogue across distance. Through an exchange of video messages and images, they respond to one another, reopening a shared past shaped by ideological rupture, silence, and opposing memories. In this cinematic encounter, memory is not reconciled but made visible in its fracture.

An intimate portrait of a family in which German history continues to resonate into the present.

CREDITS

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

Completed: March 2026

Distribution: Piffl Medien GmbH

Eastern Germany, 2025: video messages help a dissident writer father and his son, whose underground films contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall, to confront decades of family silence and the enduring trauma of dictatorial ideology.

SUMMARY

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 regime and communist East Germany (the GDR). Writer Gert Neumann, whose writing itself became an act of resistance, exchanges video messages with his son Aram Radomski, a photographer who captured the years of upheaval surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall. Through this cinematic dialogue, they confront decades of silence and search for truth, responsibility, and closeness.

PRESS KIT

TRAILER

SCREENER

Please send us a request (arika @ pifflmedien.de)
for the password to the screener

SYNOPSIS

Gert Neumann is a writer. His son Aram Radomski is a photographer. As a twenty-year-old, Aram secretly documented the mass protests of 9 October 1989 in Leipzig for West German television—images that went around the world and became part of the visual memory of the Peaceful Revolution. His father spent decades in the GDR fighting for the freedom of language, with severe personal and familial consequences.

Their conflict is rooted in a three-generation history. Aram’s grandmother was a devoted supporter of the Third Reich in her youth before becoming a celebrated emerging author in the newly founded GDR. From this contradictory maternal biography, Gert Neumann developed a radical form of artistic resistance within East Germany. He pursued this path with uncompromising consistency—ultimately at the cost of his family. For his son, this decision became an experience of abandonment and betrayal.

While Aram is widely regarded as a hero of the Peaceful Revolution, his father still calls him an “agent of the West.” For years, father and son have had no contact.

The Price of Resistance brings them into a dialogue across distance. Through an exchange of video messages and images, they respond to one another, reopening a shared past shaped by ideological rupture, silence, and opposing memories. In this cinematic encounter, memory is not reconciled but made visible in its fracture.

An intimate portrait of a family in which German history continues to resonate into the present.