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Submitted by Adam

In 1984, Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), a Stasi agent monitoring famed East German playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and his actress girlfriend, Chista-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), doctors his reports, disposes of incriminating evidence, and sacrifices his career to protect the couple. He fails to save Sieland, who’s driven to suicide by the Stasi, but he does save Dreyman from prison. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Dreyman finds his file in the old Stasi archives, discovers all that Wiesler (code-name “HGW XX/7”) did for him, and writes a novel about these events. The movie ends with Wiesler, now living in poverty, discovering the novel in a bookstore and reading the dedication page: “With gratitude, to HGW XX/7.” The clerk asks him if he wants the novel gift-wrapped. “No,” he says. “It’s for me.”

Note: This is a great movie, and more than worthy of its Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.