This week’s Op-Doc is the haunting animated short, “Broken: The Women’s Prison at Hoheneck.†Directors Alexander Lahl and Volker Schlecht were inspired to make the film while writing a graphic novel, in which one of the characters was an East German swimmer who tried to escape the German Democratic Republic by swimming across the Baltic Sea to Denmark. She never arrived, as she was caught by the secret service (the “Stasiâ€) and sent to prison.
This story was representative for many East German women, who were simply trying to flee a repressive regime for the relative freedom of the West and often sent to Hoheneck, the notorious women’s prison. A scriptwriter for this film, Max Mönch, had an aunt who was a political prisoner, and she told the filmmakers more about the harrowing experience of women there.
As the directors write, “The general themes of repression in East Germany were not new for us. But as we did our research, we were surprised and enraged to learn that the thousands of women ...
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