Synopsis:
A young married couple—both actors—work in Cold War Berlin before the Wall is built. Agnes is on location in East Berlin, and Jochen, her husband, works at the Westend Theater in West Berlin. They hold diametrically opposed views on politics, art and the responsibility of the individual to society. As they have vehement arguments, their marriage is in danger of breaking up.

This film portrays numerous figures of contemporary German cultural and political life—including Veit Harlan, director of the notorious Nazi propaganda film Jud Süss, and Boleslaw Barlog, a famous West Berlin theater director. Also memorable in this film is documentary footage of the construction of Stalin Allee, the biggest boulevard built in East Berlin after WWII, soon to become a central locus of the popular uprising of 17 June 1953. Although director Kurt Maetzig depicts Cold War Berlin with dramatic verve, the film illustrates the tightening grip of Stalinism on East German cultural production at this time.

Press Comments:
Official Selection, 1991 Berlin International Film Festival

Maetzig later called this film an artistic mistake, but today The Story of a Young Couple represents a fascinating document of its time. Anyone who wants to experience the tensions of the Cold War won’t find any more authentic work in German film history. (…) A pathetic utopia that subjected itself unconditionally to the political canon of the day. - Martin Mund, Neues Deutschland

The film is meaningful and significant as an authentic document about the hysteria and resulting falsification of truth in the Cold War. – epd filmdienst

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