After Winter Comes Spring

A documentary shot in luminous black-and-white that travels across the German Democratic Republic shortly before its end. Director Helke Misselwitz sets out by railway from her childhood town at the age of 40 to discover how others have lived and how they want to live. Along the way she converses with women of all ages—teenage runaways, a divorcée balancing factory work and caring for her disabled daughter, a great-grandmother admitting a mistaken marriage—who speak plainly of regret, longing, and hope. The film forms a group portrait of female East Germany, questioning the outgoing leadership's claims of advancing equality between the genders while looking anxiously toward the new world being born.