After a long slump, German cinema isn't doing badly at all these last few years. Yesterday I watched what is easily the best film, no matter which language, I've seen in a while, "Das Leben der Anderen" (literary translated "The Life of the Others", though who knows what they're going to call it when it gets released abroad - and make no mistake, this one has Oscar nomination for best foreign language written all over it!). Set in East Germany in the 80s, it has a simple story at its core: one of the higher-ups in the party falls for an actress who is involved with a writer. This being a dictatorship, the VIP tells the Stasi (= East German secret police) to put the writer under surveillance and to find something that implicates him as a traitor. The Stasi officer in charge of the surveillance begins to get more and more emotionally involved with both the actress and the writer the longer he spies on them....

( Spoilers )