Gerhard Gundermann (1955-1998) was a heavy equipment operator at a lignite strip mine and a Stasi informer, but above all he was a gifted singer-songwriter with a fanbase in both the former GDR as well as the subsequent, reunified Germany. In his feature film GUNDERMANN, director Andreas Dresen takes a sensitive look at this contradictory personality. The result is a perceptive biographical narrative that unreels like a modern musical Heimatfilm ["homeland" film] for East (and all of) Germany.

During the day, Gerhard Gundermann was an excavator operator at a lignite strip mine in Lausatia; at night, he would get up on the stage and move people with his music. In the 1980s, above all his personal songs reflective of everyday life brought him a growing fanbase in East Germany, one that continued to grow after German reunification. And even when it came out that Gundermann, who in the GDR had always had conflicts with the state powers, had worked for the Ministry for State Security, his success didn't stop. And, likewise, success didn't stop him from continuing to work as an excavator operator in a lignite strip mine. He died in 1998 at the age of only 43.

Andreas Dresen's films are subtle chronicles of the German Democratic Republic and life in East Germany. This sensitive biographical narrative in GUNDERMANN continues along the same line. Dresen tells of a man who is summarily kicked out of the party, works as an excavator operator and marries his childhood sweetheart, leaving her to feed the family – all in the name of making music. It is a film about life, with all its contradictions and shortcomings, about death and dying, and above all about good music!

Reviews and Commentary

"Gerhard Gundermann is a prime example of the split German public. In the East, everyone knows him; in the West, virtually no one. Westwards, a film about him has to explain; eastwards, it must be 'right'."
(Christoph Diekmann, Die Zeit Nr. 34/2018, 16.08.2018)

"Gundermann (1955-1998). Why do we remember him with so much love and passion? Because his songs deal with a country that fell so quickly that it left behind a deep sense of loss. Especially in an area where the jobs soon disappeared. Even today, his songs can bring tears to the eyes when they suddenly pop up somewhere, like in this movie."
Ballads of harrowing intimacy and poetry that tell of the finiteness of life; of grass, which always grows back; of hard hands and guardian angels that have nothing left to do since they ran out of miners. [...] The film naturally gains power from the songs, all which are newly recorded. The man on the guitar sings like Gundermann, moves like Gundermann, looks like him, and is a master at dragging out the consonants and the Lausatia dialect. He didn't just appropriate the large standard-issue glasses, but even has the gap in his teeth. Alexander Scheer, an organic stroke-of-luck, even acts as if he himself would think the same way as Gundermann whenever he crinkles his nose or pushes up his glasses when in an uncomfortable situation. The director aptly calls it, 'acting from inside'."
(Birgit Walter, Berliner Zeitung, 14.08.2018)

"The biggest event of the film is Alexander Scheer, who plays the oddball 'Gundi' in his full oddness. The dorkiness of the character, who looks out into the world rather obtusely with a crinkled nose, large teeth and unfashionable glasses, never veers into caricature but brims with life of its own: Scheer creates an alter ego that one can no longer differentiate from the real Gundermann whenever the latter shows up in the film on television."
"An individual who doesn't allow himself to be tied down, who is as flexible and spontaneous as the concoction that is his language, which Sheer composes from Thuringia intonation, Dresdner accentuation and Berlinerisms ('ick', 'wa'). If Alexander Scheer doesn't win all the upcoming acting awards, then there is no football god."
(Matthias Dell, Der Spiegel, 21.08.2018)

Director Andreas Dresen together with Gundermann's wife, Conny Gundermann, on the German talk show MDR Kultur (18.08.2018) :
"It was also difficult to find a production company for the project. For the one, the screenplay didn't have Gundermann show enough remorse for his Stasi activities; others, on the other hand, asked 'Who's Gundermann?' Sometimes you had the feeling that if you wanted to tell stories from your own East German life experiences, you had to offer extra justification for doing so. That did aggravate me," admits the director.
Ultimately, with GUNDERMANN one wants to dare a differentiated view of the East German story and transport this view to the West as well. As Dresen says, "It would be nice if the film were to make people who have never heard of him before notice Gundermann." To which Conny adds, 'I hope that his songs will outlast us, too.'"

Production Country

Germany (DE)

Production Period

2017/2018

Production Year

2018

color

color

Duration

Feature-Length Film (61+ Min.)

Type

Feature Film

Genre

Musical, Heimatfilm, Biography / Portrait

Topic

Love, Work, Home, Fall of the Wall / Reunification, Psychology, GDR, Socialism / Communism, Music

Scope of Rights

Nichtexklusive nichtkommerzielle öffentliche Aufführung (nonexclusive, noncommercial public screening),Keine TV-Rechte (no TV rights)

Notes to the Licence

zusätzliche UT Fassungen: TH/EN, LT

Einsätze nach Absprache mit dem Filmbereich

Licence Period

30.11.2025

Permanently Restricted Areas

Germany (DE), Austria (AT), Switzerland (CH)

Available Media

DVD, DCP, Blu-ray Disc

Original Version

German (de)

DVD

Subtitles

German (full), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (zh), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar), Lithuanian (lt)

DCP

Subtitles

German (full), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (zh), Japanese (ja), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar), Lithuanian (lt), Thai (th)

Blu-ray Disc

Subtitles

German (full), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (zh), Russian (ru), Arabic (ar), Lithuanian (lt), Thai (th)

Note on the Format

zusätzliche UT Fassungen: TH/EN, LT

Einsätze nach Absprache mit dem Filmbereich

• Gundermann
• Andreas Dresen