Premiering September 27, 2022

On the surface, 1989: A Spy Story (Global Screen) is just that: a story about a spy at the end of the cold war. However, the film quickly dispatches with easy cookie-cutter assumptions based on what you’ve seen before. Instead, we have a compelling thriller about a double agent who has long since questioned her mission. Saskia Starke (Petra Schmidt-Schaller, Marnow Murders) is married to an American, has two teenage children, and works for the CIA in West Berlin. She has all the comforts of a Western life but happens to be the daughter of a Stasi officer who orchestrated her placement as a deep undercover agent for the German Democratic Republic (GDR, in German DDR). He even pushes her to marry her eventual American husband Richard (Harold Schrott, Inspector Dupin).

But then life happens. Saskia loves her family and slowly begins to doubt the ideals of the GDR. As it becomes clear the Berlin Wall will come down and along with it the German Democratic Republic, Saskia finds herself at imminent risk of being exposed. More so when American CIA officer Jeremy Redman (Ulrich Thomsen, The Good Traitor) starts to investigate a possible mole in the West Berlin office.

This film is more nuanced than the all too simple drama of right vs. wrong where the West ultimately triumphs. While the international cloak and dagger spy machinations are indeed present in all its glory, the real thriller here is Saskia’s solo mission to cover her tracks so she doesn’t lose everything she’s grown to love.