Watch West For Free

You won't be disappointed!

Thanks for the memories!

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

A drama about a mother and son who manage to emigrate from East Germany to West Germany during the era of the Cold War. The transition is complicated by the ongoing requirements of the immigration centre in order to obtain West German citizenship. Further complications arise as her son's father, who they believed dead from an accident in the Soviet Union, is suspected by Western secret services of being alive and having been a Stasi agent. The mother moves inexorably towards paranoia as she becomes unsure of who she can actually trust.The film captures the atmosphere of the period through incidents, detail and setting. However, at times the film appears a little too concerned with appealing to a potentially broad audience through intrigue, romance and melodrama; understandable but perhaps occasionally unfortunate.

A document of a time passed by. And while I don't think this feels to dated (if you let yourself into the mood and time when the movie playing), you will like what you see. It's a story about people trying to survive, while being confronted by politics and paranoia. It isn't (or rather wasn't easy) to live like this. Even harder to survive when you try to stay in the middle.While some might argue that this feels like a movie of the week type, I'd disagree. It might have a story line that is close to that, but the acting and the framing, lighting and everything else point out that this is more than that. If you like your drama to feel as real as possible (with touches of a thriller), here you go

As others have observed about this film, the idea of a woman who seeks to make a new life for herself (and her son), yet finds it difficult to do so, is territory that has been explored before. And, for people who are familiar with German-language films in general, the ideas explored in this film probably seem very familiar indeed.Speaking as a person who has not seen a significant number of German-language films, I found myself very engaged with this story from start to finish. One of the aspects of this story that I think others might connect with as well, especially for anyone who has ever gone to live in another country for a significant length of time, is how difficult it can be to overcome the many obstacles that exist, some of which are placed in front of you by the government of your new country. Thus of the many challenges that our protagonist has to overcome, seeing how a government official often has to place a stamp in a document to get past them may be all too familiar (and painful) to many of us, regardless of what country we might have gone to live in. Some of the other obstacles put in the way of Nelly in her quest to build a new life will also be very familiar to many, for instance, how the fact that she has an advanced degree, and how her experience with doing research in a lab setting, is looked at as far below the standards of her new country (whereas in all likelihood, she would be more than qualified to do the work in West Germany, just as she had been in East Germany). I suspect that if she had been a man rather than a woman, she might have gotten more favorable treatment -- but that is a topic for another day, and for other films!One of the most important parts of the story has to do with the extent to which Nelly's paranoia gradually increases as time goes by, fueled in no small part by what she is led to believe by the character John Bird. As others have observed (and likely will continue to observe), the way their relationship plays out is one of the less satisfying aspects of this film, and even though I have not read the book, what I've heard from others leads me to believe that John Bird's character in the film is not developed to nearly the extent that it could have been.I found the most fascinating character in the film to be Hans, who is one of the other residents in the government housing complex with Nelly and her son, Alexej. (On a side note, I would say that there are three characters that are particularly well-developed and well- acted, specifically, Alexej, Nelly, and Hans.) In Hans, we have a character whose past is largely unknown to us, and it is through his character that we come to understand to what extent xenophobia is rampant throughout this housing complex, in that he is widely viewed as a Stasi informant. We at first only suspect as much based on dismissive glances in his direction, and ultimately find confirmation that this is the case when he is brutally beaten. It is this type of dynamic, and how it was expressed, that I found to be one of the most insightful aspects of this film. The centerpiece of the film, and in my view its most powerful aspect, is how the relationship between mother and son evolves as they react to their new environment. With Alexej, we observe a very natural inclination to want to spend time with Hans, especially as Nelly's paranoia grows ever stronger, which erodes her relationship with her son. And, Nelly too succumbs to the temptation to paint Hans with the same broad brush as everyone else (other than Alexej). I would say this difference in perspective, between mother and son, on their experiences in their new country, is expressed in a very profound way, and we are left to wonder how it will impact their relationship after the credits roll.

I tried to like this film but could never get into it, the plot is unbelievable, at it rests on Nelly's character, that changes her mind and follows a logic of her own. Art direction is good, and actors do what they can with a story full of clichés, from the sexy "damsel in distress" to the bullied son, the love affair that makes no sense and ends as abruptly as it started, the friend who is always there and is taken for granted, the cool and also pretty neighbour who plays Bach but is reduced to being a cook and mistreated at it, her father who is a bit nuts but not really dangerous so we have to like him too, the ugly STASI female doctors, dumb looking officials- funny looking clothing-, menacing everything for we are supposed to empathize with Nelly who is being driven crazy by the German bureaucratic system.Sorry, it didn't work for me. Some people left at the showing here in BA, and I do understand it. The ending was a monument for cheesiness. The movie pretends to make us feel empathy x Nelly while using many Hollywood tricks like "mom-son having a good time", "Christmas making characters take the big decision", "overqualified Eastern Germans being reduced to menial jobs because of ...?", and the list could go on. Maybe I expected a good European film but got an average TV movie that looks like those manufactured for Hallmark channel and the like, only this was spoken in German.I do hope other people can see nicer things in this film, I sincerely couldn't. I wouldn't watch it.