DEFA is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year. Since 1946, the East German state film studio has been a place where propaganda was produced and control and censorship were the order of the day—yet at the same time, it was home to great artists who repeatedly fought to carve out creative freedom. We’re celebrating the legacy of these directors where it belongs: at the newly renovated Kino International on Karl-Marx-Allee, the former DEFA premiere theater—now featuring Christie laser projection, 4K, and Dolby 7.1. 

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Over eight Sundays, we’ll be screening outstanding works that have lost none of their power to this day—in the original German version with English subtitles.

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Nineteen-year-old Maria falls in love with the judge who once convicted her brother of “incitement against the state.” Kurt Maetzig’s film THE RABBIT IS ME was completed in 1965 and immediately banished to the archives—banned until the GDR ceased to exist. One of the sharpest self-examinations DEFA cinema has ever undertaken.