Sky Without Stars

Kautner’s signature film is a black-and-white, almost-neorealist story of love obstructed by the border separating the GDR and the FRG. Anna (Eva Kotthaus), an East German factory worker, sneaks over to the West, abducts her own son, and in the process meets and falls in love with a compassionate cop named Carl (Erik Schumann)—thus beginning a slow-burning romance filled with daring, unsanctioned visits to their respective sides of the Iron Curtain. Suffused by a sense of tragic fatalism, this absorbing tale of lovers on the run makes an affecting and persuasive argument about the terrible consequences of erecting walls between people. 35mm print courtesy of the Goethe-Institut.