More than 20 years after reunification, the baleful influence of the former East Germany’s very sinister and corrupt system continues to be felt in today’s Federal Republic. Director Marc Bauder and writer Dörte Franke have treated the subject in a number of films and their latest takes the form of a topical financial thriller about the intrigue surrounding a contract for a pipeline that will transport natural gas from Russia to Germany. The setting is the once popular but now rundown town of Rostock, where a naïve young dropout and petty criminal becomes involved with dubious businessmen who are in fact ruthless former Stasi people using their knowledge of the recent and very murky past for financial gain.

Though the film is a work of fiction, Bauder insists that the story is real. “Morality is not part of the thinking of people running these business networks,” he says. “It’s only their personal profit that they think of.” 

Showing as part of German Film Week, presented in co-operation with the Goethe-Institut Irland.