1st Look: The Lives of Others one-sheet

Quick Links  Sony Pictures Classics  The Lives of Others  Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck  Martina Gedeck  Sebastian Koch  Ulrich Mühe  Ulrich Tukur

In the foreign film category, this year’s favorite is most likely going to come from Sony Pictures Classics’ hand. Not only are they holding a pair of pocket kings in Zhang Yimou’s The Curse of the Golden Flower and Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book, but they are also holding pocket aces with Pedro’s Volver and in some circles the best picture of the year on the international scene with Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck‘s The Lives of Others. Today we’re previewing the North American one sheet.

East Berlin, November 1984. Five years before its downfall, the former East-German government ensured its claim to power with a ruthless system of control and surveillance. Party-loyalist Captain Gerd Wiesler hopes to boost his career when given the job of collecting evidence against the playwright Georg Dreyman and his girlfriend, the celebrated theater actress Christa-Maria Sieland. After all, the “operation” is backed by the highest political circles. What he didn’t anticipate, however, was that submerging oneself into the world of the target also changes the surveillance agent. The immersion in the lives of others–in love, literature, free thinking and speech–makes Wiesler acutely aware of the meagerness of his own existence and opens to him a completely new way of life which he has ever more trouble resisting. But the system, once started, cannot be stopped. A dangerous game has begun.

Sony Pictures Classics gets released just prior to the Oscars on February the 9th. Click here for the one sheet.