The Turning Point

The Turning Point (1983)

Der Aufenthalt

In the fall of 1945, nineteen year-old Mark Niebuhr, is accused of murder and is jailed as a prisoner of war in Warsaw, Poland. He maintains his claim of innocence throughout long periods of solitary confinement. When Mark is placed among a group of Polish criminals, he becomes the target of their aggression. Later, Mark experiences true hell in a communal cell with fanatical German war criminals. Turning Point is based on actual events from Hermann Kant's novel of the same name.

Date of release
1983-01-20
TMDB
4.9 / 10 (8)
Runtime
1h 42m
Genres
Drama
Director
Frank Beyer

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 0 · Nominations: 1

The Turning Point is a 1983 East German film directed by Frank Beyer and starring Sylvester Groth, Fred Düren and Klaus Piontek. The film is based on the 1977 novel of the same name by Hermann Kant, which was based on Kant's own experience as a prisoner of war in Poland. The film tells the story of a German prisoner of war at the end of World War II who is wrongly accused of being a war criminal. The film was controversial upon release as Polish commentators criticized that the film showed the Polish army wrongly accusing someone of war crimes.

Production and distribution

The Turning Point premiered on 20 January 1984 and was widely released in East Germany the following day. The film was widely praised by the East German press, with Neues Deutschland declaring the film "a testament to the friendship between the People's Republic of Poland and East Germany". The Polish reaction was very negative and the depiction of the Polish army wrongly accusing a German of war crimes was perceived as anti-Polish.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended