[nrjames]

Disney made a movie about this called Night Crossing in the early 1980s. More recently, there's a 2018 German movie about it called Balloon.

[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082810/

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7125774

[lukeweston1234]

The 2018 film is a really good movie, I would highly recommend checking it out!

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

+1 to this! I wonder if some of the horror in it (the constant threat of the Stasi and its implications) translates well to non-German audiences. In case you're wondering about Germany's strict privacy laws - this is part of why they exist.

[omnibrain]

It's interesting that this is a serious movie by the director Michael 'Bully' Herbig, who is generally known for bad taste comedies, full of clichees about race and sexuality.

[mndgs]

+2, very nice movie. Might be very eye-opening for any some about what it was like under USSR umbrella...

[dkga]

+1, really well-done movie!

[foota]

I watched Night Crossing in my german class in high school. I remember it being intense.

[wolvoleo]

For the 80s it was intense yes. Watching it now that same tension feels milder but I guess that's because every single TV show now has to have constant explosions, car crashes etc in it.

There is actually gunfire in it and a teenager dies in the beginning but it still feels less intense due to the 80s pace IMO.

[CMay]

They have the 2018 movie free to watch on Fandango At Home, which doesn't even require you to login to watch it: https://athome.fandango.com/content/browse/details/Balloon/1...

[mixmastamyk]

I watched it on Kanopy last night, free but you have to log in with a library card. The fandango link above asked for $2.99.

[wolvoleo]

Great movie yes! The 1980s one, I have not seen the new one.

[dang]

I appreciate your concern for comment quality! but this is the kind of point that depends on how someone is using HN overall.

If an account were doing this repetitively in a way that didn't feel like genuine conversation, that would be quite different than a case like this, where there's no sign of such a pattern and the account is using HN quite as intended - randomly walking through topics of curiosity. It seems more likely that nrjames just happened to remember those movies* and wanted to make sure they got a mention in the thread. That's fine!

I'd say this guideline is relevant here: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

(* as have others, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46652703)