West Berlin in the autumn of 1989. Victor is a film producer. For adverts – but with the demeanour of a Hollywood tycoon! In reality, things do not look good for his company, Sunny Point. His credit line is overstretched, a big job has fallen through. All he has are a few cinema ads that are paying peanuts. The company is held together by his secretary (still in her probation period) and an ambitious employee. The big secret is that Victor is a refugee from East Germany, where he was a plastics engineer. In order to collect a second round of start-up aid from West Germany, he decides to feign a new escape and jumps into the River Spree – on November 9, of all days.
This satire about a self-made man who knows all the capitalist tricks to deploy for his criminal business plan was made with no state subsidies, instead relying on improvisational talent and creative input. In addition to film quotes and images of the Berlin Wall coming down, snippets of video games and local movie adverts, director Wolf Vogel brought his industry knowledge and his experiences in East Germany to his narrative debut. Shot with a West-East crew and cast, ‘Sunny Point’ avoids the popular cliché of the needy “brothers and sisters in the East”.

G 1995, directed by Wolf Vogel, 97 min, German, English subtitles