Best movies like Die Frau vom Checkpoint Charlie

East Germany. Summer, late 70's. Three years after her boyfriend Wassilij's apparent death, Nelly Senff decides to escape from behind the Berlin wall with her son Alexej, leaving her traumatic memories and past behind. Pretending to marry a West German, she crosses the border to start a new life in the West. But soon her past starts to haunt her as the Allied Secret Service begin to question Wassilij's mysterious disappearance. Is he still alive? Was he a spy? Plagued by her past and fraught with paranoia, Nelly is forced to choose between discovering the truth about her former lover and her hopes for a better tomorrow.

A beautiful East German Olympic hopeful pole-vaults over the Berlin Wall to freedom.

Two men want to escape from East Germany (under Communist rule) but they will only go if they can take their families with them. Based on a true story.

A US intelligence officer, stationed in Germany, is caught in a political dilemma when the Russians kidnap a young Army private, the son of prominent American businessman. In exchange for the soldier's return, the Russians attempt to barter a trade for an elderly German couple who they want for treason.

The untold story about wild rabbits which lived between the Berlin Walls. For 28 years Death Zone was their safest home. Full of grass, no predators, guards protecting them from human disturbance. They were closed but happy. When their population grew up to thousands, guards started to remove them. But rabbits survived and stayed there. Unfortunately one day the wall fell down. Rabbits had to abandon comfortable system. They moved to West Berlin and have been living there in a few colonies since then. They are still learning how to live in the free world, same as we - the citizens of Eastern Europe.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union captures U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers after shooting down his U-2 spy plane. Sentenced to 10 years in prison, Powers' only hope is New York lawyer James Donovan, recruited by a CIA operative to negotiate his release. Donovan boards a plane to Berlin, hoping to win the young man's freedom through a prisoner exchange. If all goes well, the Russians would get Rudolf Abel, the convicted spy who Donovan defended in court.

Double-agent Alexander Eberlin is assigned by the British to hunt out a Russian spy, known to them as Krasnevin. Only Eberlin knows that Krasnevin is none other than himself! Accompanying him on his mission is a ruthless partner, who gradually discovers his secret as Eberlin tries to maneuver himself out of a desperate situation.

Persona Non Grata in his homeland, protest singer Klaus Drittemann must leave East Berlin, his wife and child and emigrate to West Berlin, where the representatives of an American record company are eagerly waiting for him. They plan to exploit his defection from communism both ideologically and financially. But Klaus, as ill-at-ease in the West as he was in the East, is reluctant to be used as an expendable commodity. Leaving his contract unsigned (or signed in his manner), he leaves for Cambridge to meet his father, a concert player, who -just like him - left East Berlin thirty years ago as Klaus was a little boy. He is accompanied by a young French journalist, Emma, who knows where his father has been living since he disappeared for more than a decade. The young lady is cooperative but might hide things from him...

Colonel Stok, a Soviet intelligence officer responsible for security at the Berlin Wall, appears to want to defect but the evidence is contradictory. Stok wants the British to handle his defection and asks for one of their agents, Harry Palmer, to smuggle him out of East Germany.

Alex Kerner's mother was in a coma while the Berlin wall fell. When she wakes up he must try to keep her from learning what happened (as she was an avid communist supporter) to avoid shocking her which could lead to another heart attack.

A British woman on a visit to post-war Berlin is caught up in an espionage ring smuggling secrets into and out of the Eastern Bloc.

An American scientist is sent by the CIA to East Germany to retrieve a secret microfilm from a Soviet scientist interested in defecting to the West but the Stasi secret police's surveillance complicates matters.

East-Berlin, 1961, shortly after the erection of the Wall. Konrad, Sophie and three of their friends plan a daring escape to Western Germany. The attempt is successful, except for Konrad, who remains behind. From then on, and for the next 28 years, Konrad and Sophie will attempt to meet again, in spite of the Iron Curtain. Konrad, who has become a reputed Astrophysicist, tries to take advantage of scientific congresses outside Eastern Germany to arrange encounters with Sophie. But in a country where the political police, the Stasi, monitors the moves of all suspicious people (such as Konrad's sister Barbara and her husband Harald), preserving one's privacy, ideals and self-respect becomes an exhausting fight, even as the Eastern block begins its long process of disintegration.

In 1984 East Berlin, an agent of the secret police, conducting surveillance on a writer and his lover, finds himself becoming increasingly absorbed by their lives.

Rita Vogt is a radical West German terrorist who abandons the revolution and settles in East Germany with a new identity provided by the East German secret service. She lives in constant fear of having her cover blown, which unavoidably happens after the German re-unification.

An American ex-WW II POW returns to Germany 30 years after the war. He teams up with the former commander of his prison camp. Together they spring a Nazi war criminal from jail. He's the only one left who knows where a secret wartime cache of gold is hidden.

A group of kids grow up on the short, wrong (east) side of the Sonnenallee in Berlin, right next to one of the few border crossings between East and West reserved for German citizens. The antics of these kids, their families, of the "West German" friends and relatives who come to visit, and of the East German border guards, all serve to illustrate the absurdity of everyday life on the Sonnenallee, and therefore throughout the former East Germany.

British agent Alec Leamas refuses to come in from the Cold War during the 1960s, choosing to face another mission, which may prove to be his final one.

Inspired by true events, Olympic swimmer Harry Melchior defects from East Germany in the 1960s and hatches a daring plot to help his sister and others flee East Berlin through a 145-yard underground tunnel.

Can a couple keep important secrets from Communist spies?

Vera von Schalburg is a German prostitute working in Nazi Germany. In 1938, one year before the outbreak of World War II, Schalburg is arrested by the Berlin police. She is offered to work as a spy for the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service, instead of facing jail time. Completely unaware of the secret war preparations being conducted by her government, and unwilling to leave her teenage son who later joins the Hitler Youth, she accepts the offer.

When a Polish sailor jumps ship in Britain, a couple of local intelligence operatives keep him under surveillance. Soon, he’s recruited to infiltrate a missile installation outside of East Berlin and bring back photos of the new rockets.

A U.S. intelligence general recalls three Cold War cases of Soviet, French and Italian spies.

U.S. spies catch a Moscow-born U.S. citizen helping spies, and they force him to counterspy.

Georg Laschen leaves his family in West Germany to go work as a war correspondent in Beirut during the fights between Christians and Palestinians.

Two families attempt a daredevil plan to escape the GDR with a homemade hot air balloon, but it crashes just before the border. The Stasi finds traces of this attempt to escape and immediately starts investigations, while the two families are forced to build a new escape balloon. With each passing day the Stasi is closer on their heels – a nerve-wracking race against time begins.

Stalinstadt, East Germany, 1956. While the Hungarian uprising against Soviets is taking place, teenage members of a classroom of the local school perform a seemingly harmless act that causes unexpected consequences.

1980: 19 year old Robert, fed up with Hippy phoniness and bourgeoise narrow mindedness alike, flees the German provinces for West Berlin. A tour de force through the glorious dirt of West Berlin ensues. Full of sex, drugs, love and PUNK.

Frank, a tenth grade student, falls in love with his classmate Regine. His father is a well-connected plant manager in the GDR; Regine's mother is a single parent with four children. Regine wants to become a kindergarten teacher, but her grades are poor and she is not allowed to apply for technical college. Frank champions her and seeks an open discussion about these rigid regulations. But his criticism is nipped in the bud.

Berlin, 1989. Sascha is a young East German border guard and Franzi is a lively young West German woman who's just moved into a flat next to Sascha's watchtower at the Berlin Wall. It takes only a slight mishap and a selfless act of chivalry and the two fall in love. But soon the Stasi believes they are witnessing the start of a revolt. This is the time of mass protests and East Germans taking refuge in the West German embassy in Prague after all. Franzi and Sascha have to find their ways to stand up for their love and strive for the impossible; to bring down the wall.

Europe 1990, the Berlin wall has just crumbled: Katrine, raised in East Germany, but now living in Norway for the last 20 years, is a “war child”; the result of a love relationship between a Norwegian woman and a German occupation soldier during World War II. She enjoys a happy family life with her mother, her husband, daughter and granddaughter. But when a lawyer asks her and her mother to witness in a trial against the Norwegian state on behalf of the war children, she resists. Gradually, a web of concealments and secrets is unveiled, until Katrine is finally stripped of everything, and her loved ones are forced to take a stand: What carries more weight, the life they have lived together, or the lie it is based on?

The ambitious scientist Franz Walter doesn't hesitate when he is promised a professorship at the university. He immediately accepts, pledges absolute loyalty to the system and agrees to work for the GDR's foreign intelligence service until he can take up his new position. Together with his colleague Dirk, he is sent on foreign assignments to West Germany. Franz soon has to use blackmail to get innocent people to talk. But his superiors go even further: GDR refugees and their relatives are targeted to be psychologically destroyed, forged letters, medical diagnoses, surveillance and wiretapping are on the agenda. However, this is more than Franz can bear: he feels powerless and increasingly isolates himself. When he then decides to steal secret documents for a later defection to the West, this results in an unfortunate chain reaction leading to his arrest and ultimately to his execution...

The real life story of East German singer and writer Gerhard Gundermann and his struggles with music, life as a coal miner and his dealings with the secret police (STASI) of the GDR.

The time is the late '80s, a crucial period in the history of South Africa. President P.W. Botha is hanging on to power by a thread as the African National Congress (ANC) takes up arms against apartheid and the country tumbles toward insurrection. A British mining concern is convinced that their interests would be better served in a stable South Africa and they quietly dispatch Michael Young, their head of public affairs, to open an unofficial dialogue between the bitter rivals. Assembling a reluctant yet brilliant team to pave the way to reconciliation by confronting obstacles that initially seem insurmountable, Young places his trust in ANC leader Thabo Mbeki and Afrikaner philosophy professor Willie Esterhuyse. It is their empathy that will ultimately serve as the catalyst for change by proving more powerful than the terrorist bombs that threaten to disrupt the peaceful dialogue.

A young man from an early age falls in love with a girl whose family is not in good standing with the ruling Communist party. His father however is a member of the "Stasi", the secret state police. The father not only hinders his son's relationship with the girl, but he arranges for his son, after finishing school, to become a Stasi spy himself.

End of the 1970s in East Germany: Fred and Jonas are close friends. The 10-year-olds live near at the German-German frontier. After the mother from Jonas has made an exit application, the boys have to recognize that they are soon separated from each other. But they want to dig a tunnel to Australia to meet there themselves again. When Jonas should leave the country with his mother this night changes everything.

Meier, a paperhanger in East Berlin, inherits from his father in West Berlin. With this money he wants to fulfil himself the dream of his life: a journey around the world. He buys a forged West German passport and pretends to go on a trip to Bulgaria while he really is off to see the free world. When he wants to return to East Berlin he finds himself in an unbelievable predicament and his double life begins. He can't keep away from his East German friends. As with all the best comedies, the action builds up to an eventual crisis. It's a light comedy, which won several national Film Academy Awards. The film is very political, with lots of political jokes/innuendos which only Germans will understand. One is left feeling what a total obscenity that stupid Wall was, dividing one people for 30 years (1-2 Generations) simply by the coincidence on where you just happen to be in the early morning on the 13th August 1961.

East Germany, 1988: working as a state security service agent, Jürgen Kaiser is loyal to the party line, but worried about his son Marco, a punk. As he is arrested after a concert, Marco is forced to join the army, where he surprisingly identifies with socialism and believes he has to defend his country against the capitalist enemy. While Jürgen is astonished, his wife Hanna and Marco's girlfriend Anja, supporting the civil rights movement, don't like his new attitude...

A young man from East Germany travels to San Francisco to search for his father, who fled 12 years ago. Together with his best friend, he starts the journey from New York with no money and the only word they ever learned in english-lessons: "friendship".

The movie tells a true story in the life of well-known German actor Manfred Krug. Living in the German Democratic Republic he is forced to leave the country after protesting against the expatriation of singer/songwriter Wolf Biermann in 1976.

13 August 1961: the GDR closes the sector borders in Berlin. The city is divided overnight. Escape to the West becomes more dangerous every day. But on September 14, 1962, exactly one year, one month and one day after the Wall was built, a group of 29 people from the GDR managed to escape spectacularly through a 135-meter tunnel to the West. For more than 4 months, students from West Berlin, including 2 Italians, dug this tunnel. When the tunnel builders ran out of money after only a few meters of digging, they came up with the idea of marketing the escape tunnel. They sell the film rights to the story exclusively to NBC, an American television station.

August 13, 1961: The passengers on the interzonal train from Munich to East Berlin learn 3½ hours before crossing the border that the Wall is being built in Berlin. They have 3½ hours to make a life-changing decision: to get off the train or keep going.

East Berlin, shortly after the construction of the Berlin Wall. Kurt Schröder and his family dig a tunnel to escape to West Berlin as they struggle to overcome the obstacles blocking their underground path to freedom.

"Kruso" tells of the last summer before the Wall came down on the small island of Hiddensee in the Baltic Sea. Beyond state-organized tourism, the isolated island became a kind of artist colony every year and a place of longing for dropouts and alternatives. Due to its proximity to Denmark, Hiddensee was also the starting point for the flight across the Baltic Sea.

Ingo Hasselbach, whose parents were Communist Party members in East Germany during his childhood, has lived at both ends of the political seesaw. The question of how people reach a change of heart is a profound one; Hasselbach describes the external forces that led to his founding Germany's first neo-Nazi political party and the internal ones that led him away from it five years later.

Felix from West-Berlin falls in love with Thomas in East-Berlin. At first they keep their relationship going by regular visits from Felix, but the curfew forces him to return every evening. When the East-German authorities become suspicious, Thomas decides to try and flee to the West.

Little Sabine has spent her childhood in an orphanage after her parents died in a car accident. When one of the women in charge at the orphanage, Edith, leaves to have a baby, Sabine runs away, because Edith was the only adult there she could trust. She then wanders through the city to find someone to take her in. She meets a lot of people on her journey, but she seems out of place everywhere she goes until, at last, she realizes that there is a special place where she belongs.

When Dr. Schmith's proposal for international research on infant mortality is rejected, he decides to leave East Germany and strikes a deal with an escape agency that promises him a leading position at a children's hospital in West Germany. But then the decision is reversed: the project is approved and his international colleagues want Dr. Schmith to head the GDR section. Moreover, he falls in love with his new colleague, Katharina. Schmith initially tries to ignore the arrangements he made with the escape agency, but they blackmail him. Things soon turn deadly...

1964 in Berlin, not long after the raise of the wall that separated the city: ex-prisoner Bruno is chosen by the eastern secret agency to be sent west with a special order. However as soon as he's crossed the border, he reports to the police. He claims his order was to kidnap someone, but he doesn't know who yet. He's forced to continue feignedly. However the east agents don't really trust him and play a double game...

Ramona lives her lonely life in Berlin working in a lipstick factory. One day she accidentally runs into Andrzei, a Polish mechanic illegally selling cigarettes in Germany during the weekend. One thing leads to another, and soon she finds herself pregnant. Then her life starts falling apart, when Andrzei tells her he already has a wife back in Poland and her baby dies shortly after its premature birth.