It’s 1956 and during a visit to West Berlin, high school students Theo and Kurt witness dramatic footage of the Budapest uprising. Back at in Stalinstadt, they spontaneously hold a two minute silence during class in solidarity with the victims of the Hungarian struggle against Soviet oppression. But the gesture causes much bigger ripples than expected. The People’s Education Minister condemns the action as a counterrevolutionary act and demands that the ringleader be named, forcing the students to choose between standing together or not.
Based on remarkable true events and adapted from Dietrich Garstka’s book ‘Das schweigende Klassenzimmer’, The Silent Revolution is a captivating Cold War-era drama that opened the 2018 Berlin International Film Festival.
Click to view the Official Trailer
Deftly weaving together threads of political tension, adolescent rebellion, and institutional menace, director Lars Kraume asks us to consider the connection between a nation’s identity and its influence on the identities of its young people, who are just beginning to question their place in society. tiff
111 minutes
