Unmasking Lies and Spies in East Germany: A Documentary

In this episode, host Sandra Abrams talks to Jamie Coughlin Silverman and Gabriel Silverman about the making of their feature documentary, THE SPIES AMONG US and how a German-American journalism program known as RIAS helped them meet Peter Keup, the subject of their film. The husband and wife duo, who run SideXSide Studios, filmed Keup’s personal journey and the actions he took after reading his secret police file created by the East German government. The secret police, or Stasi, had a data surveillance program on its citizens. From returning to the prison cell he was in, to the actual building where the program was run, Keup confronts high level officials who ran the program in rare one-on-one interviews. The film shows Keup, who was blindsided when he learns his brother was an informant for the secret police, piece his life back together and heal through the process. During their conversation, Jamie also shares what it was like to be a first time director and pregnant during filming.

Learn more about the doc and SideXSide Studios:

thespiesamongus.film

sidexsidestudios.com

Transcript

VO: 
00:10
Welcome to Media Makers Spotlight from Women in Film and Video in Washington, D.C.

VO: 
00:15
We bring you conversations with industry professionals for behind the screens, insight and inspiration.

Sandra Abrams: 
00:24
Welcome to Media Makers Spotlight. I'm your host, Sandra Abrams.

Sandra Abrams: 
00:28
And before I introduce my guests, I want you, the audience, to ask yourself, how would you feel if you discovered your brother spied on you and shared that information with the secret police known in East Germany as the Stasi?

Sandra Abrams: 
00:43
That real life situation happened to Peter Kui, a victim of the Stasi, its surveillance program, and he spent 10 months in jail.

Sandra Abrams: 
00:53
His experience is the subject of The Spies Among Us.

Sandra Abrams: 
00:58
The award-winning feature documentary is by my guests, journalists, and filmmakers,

Sandra Abrams: 
01:03
Jamie Coghlan Silverman and Gabriel Silverman.

Sandra Abrams: 
01:08
They chronicled Peter's journey in coming to grips with family betrayal

Sandra Abrams: 
01:14
after reading his secret file and how he confronts members of the secret police in rare interviews.

Sandra Abrams: 
01:21
They are the co-founders of Side by Side Studios, a global company that produces original films, live experiences and brand content.

Sandra Abrams: 
01:32
Welcome, Jamie and Gabe, and congratulations on all the success of the film.

Sandra Abrams: 
01:37
And a special salute to you, Jamie. I understand this is your directorial debut with this film.

Jamie: 
01:43
Thank you so much. Yeah, it's a cool thing to get to experience for the first time.

Jamie: 
01:46
That's for sure. Having been on the producing and writing side for most of my career.

Sandra Abrams: 
01:52
Well, I went to DC Docs Film Festival last year.

Sandra Abrams: 
01:56
I had heard about your connection to RIOS, which stands for Radio in the American Sector.

Sandra Abrams: 
02:02
And I had been the recipient of that German-American fellowship.

Sandra Abrams: 
02:07
And I did it in 2002.

Sandra Abrams: 
02:10
Now, at that time, I had we did speak to somebody who had saw their file, the Stasi file, and they had explained that to us.

Sandra Abrams: 
02:20
So and then you were recipients of that fellowship and you went you went to Germany and you also heard someone's experience now.

Sandra Abrams: 
02:30
So when did you go on the RIAs trip and to Germany on that journalism exchange program?

Sandra Abrams: 
02:37
And when did you meet Peter?

Gabe: 
02:40
so um thanks again for having us um we went on that in 2013 uh at the time i was working for

Gabe: 
02:48
the washington post as a video journalist and jamie was working for usa today and it was an

Gabe: 
02:53
incredible opportunity uh for many reasons my family history is very much intertwined with

Gabe: 
02:58
world war ii history um and so i think when we went there it was our first time in germany

Gabe: 
03:05
And our focus was really on that period of history, because frankly, in America, I'm, you know, I'm 40, I'm going to be 43 soon. The education around what behind what happened behind the I.M. Curtin is sorely lacking in our education system.

Gabe: 
03:20
And so I think what most Americans learn growing up in my generation was that there was a wall, you know, Reagan said to tear it down, and then David Hasselhoff danced on it, right?

Gabe: 
03:31
So I think going to Berlin, which is such a dynamic, incredible city that wears its history on its sleeve, it's the East-West divide is to this day quite apparent.

Gabe: 
03:41
It's visceral.

Gabe: 
03:42
When we went to Hohenchenhausen, the secret Stasi prison, they had 17, the one in Berlin, we spoke with a different victim.

Gabe: 
03:51
His name was Gilbert Furian.

Gabe: 
03:53
But the idea for the files really was sparked by a woman named Hildegard, who was the chief of staff for one of the last mayors of West Berlin.

Gabe: 
04:03
And she mentioned offhandedly, yeah, I've got a file, but I never thought I'd ever want to look into it.

Gabe: 
04:08
I don't really want to know what's in there.

Sandra Abrams: 
04:10
She didn't want to know.

Sandra Abrams: 
04:12
That's interesting.

Gabe: 
04:14
Most Germans have not opened their file.

Gabe: 
04:19
And I think that's an interesting question for the audience is if you have a file in front of you that is in some versions a retelling of your story from outside perspectives and will give you clues on who may have betrayed your confidence to the government.

Gabe: 
04:37
Would you want to open it?

Gabe: 
04:38
Because a lot of Germans have found out when they open up their files, foundational relationships in their life were the ones who spied on them or their family.

Gabe: 
04:49
That could be as close as your brother, uncle, best friend, neighbor, colleague.

Gabe: 
04:54
I mean, it's truly an act of paranoia.

Gabe: 
04:57
And that was just a fascinating place for us to start the endeavors.

Gabe: 
05:01
We were not in a position to make a feature film about this until 2019.

Gabe: 
05:05
And that's when we met Peter.

Gabe: 
05:08
There was a list of these, what we call contemporary witnesses, and we interviewed several.

Gabe: 
05:14
And then when we got to Peter, it was just clear he was the one.

Gabe: 
05:18
He fit a lot of different criteria.

Gabe: 
05:20
We wanted to make this film accessible to younger Germans and American audiences and Western audiences.

Gabe: 
05:26
So we wanted someone who could speak English and communicate in English emotionally and effectively.

Gabe: 
05:32
He could tick that box.

Gabe: 
05:33
We wanted someone who would be willing to confront the truths of their own file.

Sandra Abrams: 
05:38
and the reality the last tough that's emotional that's emotional and you know and you have to be

Gabe: 
05:45
vulnerable for that and there's a bravery in that vulnerability and then the last part of that the

Gabe: 
05:51
criteria for us was are they going on a natural investigation themselves we didn't want to drag

Gabe: 
05:57
somebody into something that they didn't want to do and also because of how complicated it is to

Gabe: 
06:02
request and receive your files which can take years we wanted somebody who had already opened

Gabe: 
06:06
their files and was already on a personal mission that we can speak to and peter he opened his file

Gabe: 
06:10
in 2012 he wasn't really starting to investigate this part of his life um or wasn't in a position

Gabe: 
06:16
to until about the time we met him because he was finishing up his doctoral thesis in history

Jamie: 
06:22
he was just starting it yeah he was just on the beginning of his own process he had just started

Jamie: 
06:27
his doctor doctoral degree a few months before and when we met you know it's like you have love at

Jamie: 
06:33
first sight, you know who is, he was, it was just clear that we were going to be in each other's

Jamie: 
06:39
lives and that he was going to be an important person to us. And his, also I'll say another

Jamie: 
06:44
important thing is he was willing to meet these study officers on camera. You know, these two

Jamie: 
06:50
sides do not talk in society. You can look at East and West, the divide of stark still in voting

Jamie: 
06:58
patterns in people's support for Ukraine or Russia because of how they grew up. It's just

Jamie: 
07:07
still a divide that's sitting there in Germany because it was never dealt with. There was never

Jamie: 
07:11
any, you know, the Sanzi spied on people, but they also physically hurt people,

Jamie: 
07:16
especially earlier on in the regime. They used a technique that we talk about in our film called

Jamie: 
07:22
and that was basically a way of emotionally manipulating people into submission.

Jamie: 
07:28
and they studied it with surgical tactical uh skill and utilized it and uh so you know nobody

Jamie: 
07:39
wants to go very few people want to go talk to the people who did this to them you know there

Jamie: 
07:44
was something like 200,000 political prisoners in Germany and being a political prisoner is as

Jamie: 
07:49
simple as you listen to the wrong radio station because you intercept the signal from West Berlin

Jamie: 
07:54
it. That could make you a political prisoner. You talk about, you know, wanting to live on the other

Jamie: 
08:01
side, wanting to experience something different. It was thought criminalized people in East Germany.

Jamie: 
08:10
And the people who perpetrated this surveillance system, at least what we would call in America,

Jamie: 
08:19
in a democracy they lived in a dictatorship crimes just were never prosecuted and they

Jamie: 
08:25
live amongst each other mostly in the eastern part of the country which is about a third of the

Jamie: 
08:29
country and so to find somebody like peter who has bravery and the true interest himself as a

Jamie: 
08:37
historian to do something pretty unprecedented and special and as a victim confront the people who

Jamie: 
08:44
ran this system, we thought was just incredibly unique and special. And once we met the antagonist,

Jamie: 
08:52
I would say, of our film, potentially, Major General Englehart, it became clear that that

Jamie: 
08:59
was going to be a main theme of this film, is the meeting of these two sides and how do people

Jamie: 
09:06
view their own history and their own truth today with the separation of a few decades.

Sandra Abrams: 
09:13
Right. Well, you know, getting people to speak that I thought was incredible.

Sandra Abrams: 
09:17
And I want to just quote something that you had said in your director's statement, Jamie.

Sandra Abrams: 
09:22
You said, as Americans, we find ourselves in a unique position with access to three former high ranking officers.

Sandra Abrams: 
09:30
And we're seen as outsiders who weren't approaching the topic with preconceived notions, because I thought this major general Engelhardt, you know, he's the last surviving leader of the Stasi.

Sandra Abrams: 
09:42
he accepted no blame had no regrets um and he admitted you know things were excessive so when

Sandra Abrams: 
09:50
you did you set that meeting up did that something with peter did and what was that like in the room

Sandra Abrams: 
09:57
you know when you went to go film that were you concerned that filming may not work out we've set

Jamie: 
10:02
up all these cameras and lighting you know what what was going on there oh man to go back that has

Jamie: 
10:09
to be like one of the most nervous moments I was ever before a shoot. So Engelhardt, Major General

Jamie: 
10:15
Engelhardt had written a book called De Letz de Man, The Last Man. And it's his autobiography of

Jamie: 
10:25
being the last man standing in the Stasi as the protesters are, you know, breaking down the doors

Jamie: 
10:31
of the building. As you see in the film, I think. As you see in the film, essentially ending the

Jamie: 
10:38
the Stasi's rule. And I got this book and I thought, well, this is fascinating that he

Jamie: 
10:44
clearly wants, he wants somebody to hear him. He wants somebody to hear his story. It was published

Jamie: 
10:49
only in the East in a very small, you know, East German publishing house. And I reached out to the

Jamie: 
10:56
publicist and I asked if he would maybe be interested in speaking to an American filmmaker

Jamie: 
11:00
and journalist about his experience. And he immediately said yes, which was really surprising

Jamie: 
11:06
I think to me, because he hasn't been interviewed on camera really at all since 1990.

Jamie: 
11:12
It's been a very long time.

Jamie: 
11:13
He spoke right after the fall of the Der Spiegel and that he says didn't go well for him.

Jamie: 
11:18
And that we showed a piece of that.

Jamie: 
11:21
But that's the last time he was interviewed.

Jamie: 
11:23
And so I did not expect that.

Jamie: 
11:25
And he told us very frankly that he would not have spoken to and does not speak to German journalists.

Jamie: 
11:30
He feels like the story is written, that the Stasi are the bad guys, and that no one's interested in hearing his side.

Jamie: 
11:38
I said, I would like to hear your side.

Jamie: 
11:41
Now, it was a tough moment for me because I realized I really need to get good at German to interview this man really good.

Sandra Abrams: 
11:49
Right.

Sandra Abrams: 
11:50
I was going to say, you have excellent, you know, you have the Edward R. Morrow Investigative Journalism Award.

Sandra Abrams: 
11:56
You know, you have these Emmy nominations for the both of you.

Sandra Abrams: 
11:59
what? I was going to say, you have all this experience. So why were you nervous?

Jamie: 
12:05
Because most people who grew up in the East speak German and Russian. They don't speak much or

Jamie: 
12:11
understand too much English. Although I think Engelhardt probably knows more than he lets on.

Jamie: 
12:16
And so I didn't speak German before I started making this film. And I started learning with

Jamie: 
12:22
the express purpose of being able to interview him. And so in the beginning, we set this interview,

Jamie: 
12:29
didn't have a pre-interview or speak beforehand.

Jamie: 
12:31
It happened really quickly.

Jamie: 
12:33
And we asked Peter if he would do the interview.

Gabe: 
12:36
Well, when we brought this opportunity,

Gabe: 
12:39
I think he was interested.

Gabe: 
12:40
And we never, I think at that point,

Gabe: 
12:42
expected him to even want to talk.

Gabe: 
12:44
We had conceived of it originally

Gabe: 
12:46
as more of like a wild, wild country setup

Gabe: 
12:48
where you have one side telling one story,

Gabe: 
12:50
another telling another story.

Gabe: 
12:51
And it's in their conflict of their retelling

Gabe: 
12:54
that there's all this interest.

Gabe: 
12:56
And when Peter actually said,

Gabe: 
12:57
I would like to talk to him.

Gabe: 
13:00
You know, we considered it.

Gabe: 
13:01
And, you know, at the Washington Post, I had done a couple of projects where you see,

Gabe: 
13:06
will you take yourself out of the situation as a journalist?

Sandra Abrams: 
13:09
Right. That was one of my questions because, you know, normally you do the pre-interview

Sandra Abrams: 
13:13
or pre-production and you figure everything out and you take yourself out.

Gabe: 
13:17
Exactly. And I think with this situation, we basically said to Peter, look, you know,

Gabe: 
13:23
you're a historian.

Gabe: 
13:26
You, everybody has multi dimensions to their story and their personality.

Gabe: 
13:32
You do not need to reveal yourself.

Gabe: 
13:35
You should not be feeling forced to say that you were Victor Schatzinger to Englehart.

Gabe: 
13:40
And the conversation lasted about two and a half hours.

Gabe: 
13:44
There's clearly tension in the room.

Gabe: 
13:46
Peter, as you see in the film, is very nervous.

Gabe: 
13:49
There's a re-traumatization.

Gabe: 
13:51
There's still this power dynamic that exists between people who were within the system versus people who were the focus of the system.

Gabe: 
13:59
And to Englehart's credit, when he found out that Peter was doing the interview, he didn't leave.

Gabe: 
14:05
He sat down.

Gabe: 
14:06
The conversation lasted about two and a half hours.

Gabe: 
14:08
And it was about halfway through that an exchange triggered Peter to share his side of the story.

Gabe: 
14:14
And again, to Englehart's credit, he didn't leave.

Gabe: 
14:16
He stayed and he engaged.

Gabe: 
14:18
And at the end of it, they shake hands.

Gabe: 
14:21
And that started actually the filming relationship with Engelhardt.

Gabe: 
14:25
So like every other scene that you see in the film is almost chronological.

Gabe: 
14:30
Everything that we filmed with him happened after that first interview when he knew that Peter was part of the production.

Gabe: 
14:36
And then they wanted to continue the conversation at various points of the six years of making the film.

Jamie: 
14:42
Peter wanted to continue the conversation.

Sandra Abrams: 
14:44
And Engelhardt agreed and he showed up, you know.

Sandra Abrams: 
14:47
So it took you about six years to put this film together with documentary. You don't know how they're going to go. So but yet when you're doing a new story, you're going, OK, I've got my minute 30 package to do. I've got this soundbite. I've got this B-roll. What were your, I guess, production meetings like?

Sandra Abrams: 
15:07
And also, like, did you get certain equipment that maybe you would not have done if you went when you were a journalist?

Sandra Abrams: 
15:15
Like, you know, how did you what was that like for you moving into that as the filmmaker?

Gabe: 
15:22
Sure. Yeah. The transition from journalism to documentaries is a bigger gap than I think most people realize because documentary is a different economic ecosystem.

Gabe: 
15:30
And I think when people are looking for a product in that world, it's a different set of considerations than in journalism.

Gabe: 
15:40
So what is our production meetings like?

Gabe: 
15:42
I mean, the production meetings are Jamie and I.

Gabe: 
15:44
We're married.

Gabe: 
15:44
We run a company together.

Gabe: 
15:45
We've got two kids together, which is another reason it took six years.

Gabe: 
15:48
So our production meetings are breakfast.

Gabe: 
15:50
Our production meetings are in bed talking about what happened that day.

Gabe: 
15:54
Our production meetings are driving the kids off at school.

Gabe: 
15:57
Our production meetings are pretty constant.

Gabe: 
16:00
So I would say it's a pretty non-traditional production meeting, which makes it, you know,

Gabe: 
16:05
it's both, it's a, I think it's a blessing to have a really strong creative partnership.

Gabe: 
16:09
And it's also a curse because it's like all you talk about.

Gabe: 
16:12
So like, you know, my, my, my sons are, excuse me, our sons, I didn't, or if I'm,

Gabe: 
16:18
Jamie did all the work, but our sons, our sons, like our oldest one is so fascinating

Gabe: 
16:26
because he's been alive as long as we've been making the film.

Gabe: 
16:29
And he asked us probing questions about the secret police and the Stasi.

Gabe: 
16:33
And he's like, you know, he loves Paw Patrol.

Gabe: 
16:35
He's trying to reconcile.

Gabe: 
16:36
Well, why is there, you know, he knows Peter.

Gabe: 
16:38
And he's like, why is the police putting Peter in jail?

Gabe: 
16:42
But, you know, Paw Patrol, the police, you know, it's good.

Gabe: 
16:44
So, you know, production meetings are pretty consistent all the time.

Gabe: 
16:49
In terms of special equipment, I think that this is actually an important lesson in really considering how you make a film.

Gabe: 
16:58
There's a trend during what we'll call the quote unquote golden years of documentary when, you know, all these streamers came online and they were competing for, you know, the highest bidder for new films that were breaking ground.

Gabe: 
17:11
And there was this idea of a cinematic polish to it that you needed, right?

Gabe: 
17:15
Like, you know, you think about some great, the start of great documentarians like Joe Berlinger.

Gabe: 
17:21
Like, this is like, you pick up a cam and you go down to Arkansas and you film, you know, it doesn't matter.

Gabe: 
17:26
You just film.

Gabe: 
17:27
It's not about perfect lighting.

Gabe: 
17:29
It's about perfect moment.

Gabe: 
17:31
And so I think initially when we started, like you can see it with Gerke, the psychology professor in the Stasi's secret university.

Gabe: 
17:41
You know, that was a larger crew that we started.

Gabe: 
17:43
It was an earlier interview we did.

Gabe: 
17:45
We had, you know, a really like strong lighting set up.

Gabe: 
17:48
We had, you know, multiple cameras and we had a bigger crew.

Gabe: 
17:51
And what we kind of realized as the story started to merge with Peter and the Stasi kind of starting to meet each other, we realized two things.

Gabe: 
18:00
One is that if this were to feel overproduced, it would remove the sense of genuine veneer.

Gabe: 
18:07
It would create distance between genuine moments.

Gabe: 
18:10
And the other thing is, like James said at the top of the program, and this is true, I think that a lot of Stasi officers felt more comfortable talking in front of us than a lot of German crews.

Gabe: 
18:21
So we ended up deciding, okay, it's going to be the slimmest cruise possible.

Gabe: 
18:26
So most of the film was me and Jamie and a camera.

Gabe: 
18:30
And then whenever we needed sound, we got an amazing sound guy.

Gabe: 
18:34
His name is Thomas Funk from the eastern, he was raised in East Germany.

Gabe: 
18:39
And we really tried to keep it small.

Gabe: 
18:42
That intimacy was more important than anything else.

Gabe: 
18:45
So in terms of any special equipment, I mean, I have a fancier camera than I did when I was at the Washington Post.

Gabe: 
18:50
but i wouldn't say anything like bot specific i will say one thing actually we we did a this

Gabe: 
18:55
didn't really make a ton of it in the film we ended up getting a very light we've shot most of

Gabe: 
18:59
fx9 sony fx9 and then we brought an fx3 which is like a handheld version of this because we were

Gabe: 
19:05
trying to keep a low profile when we walked around town with engelhardt you know i think if we had a

Gabe: 
19:09
big production and people started like really looking at who he was maybe some it would be a

Gabe: 
19:14
different relationship so he ended up giving us like a three or four hour walking tour of berlin

Gabe: 
19:19
that we only use about 30 seconds of.

Gabe: 
19:21
And that was only possible

Gabe: 
19:22
because I had a handheld camera

Gabe: 
19:24
rather than a massive break.

Gabe: 
19:26
Because, you know, Englehart,

Gabe: 
19:27
to his credit, he is in shape.

Gabe: 
19:28
He's walking fast.

Gabe: 
19:29
He's a very fast walking

Gabe: 
19:31
at that time, 74 year old or 75 year old.

Gabe: 
19:34
So yeah, he will.

Gabe: 
19:36
Yeah, he walks circles around me at least.

Sandra Abrams: 
19:38
I was going to say that.

Sandra Abrams: 
19:40
That is incredible.

Sandra Abrams: 
19:41
Yes.

Sandra Abrams: 
19:42
Well, one of the scenes

Sandra Abrams: 
19:43
I was thinking of in particular

Sandra Abrams: 
19:44
was Peter was in the prison room

Sandra Abrams: 
19:47
where he has been held a prisoner.

Sandra Abrams: 
19:49
I think in 1981, he tried to escape.

Sandra Abrams: 
19:52
He only told his mother.

Sandra Abrams: 
19:54
And then he suddenly, he was arrested and strip-sourced

Sandra Abrams: 
19:57
and put in this prison.

Sandra Abrams: 
19:58
And there is that scene where he's in that prison.

Sandra Abrams: 
20:01
And I was thinking, how did you guys decide to do that?

Sandra Abrams: 
20:04
It just felt like very intimate to me and very emotional.

Sandra Abrams: 
20:09
And I thought that was so awesome.

Sandra Abrams: 
20:11
But again, what you said about a small crew,

Sandra Abrams: 
20:13
I think that sounds like how it went.

Gabe: 
20:16
You know, it's interesting because a lot of these places are not, you know, they're not necessarily well funded.

Gabe: 
20:21
Some are more well funded than others.

Gabe: 
20:23
And the prison that you're talking about, there's a couple of prisons that we filmed in.

Gabe: 
20:27
We call the Romand prison where all the interrogation is happening.

Gabe: 
20:31
And we'll call it, you know, they arrest first, find facts later is how they operated.

Gabe: 
20:35
And so, you know, they knew that he arrested, but like, who's trying to help him?

Gabe: 
20:39
You know, was this premeditated?

Gabe: 
20:41
You know, and he was kept in this Dresden prison for three months.

Gabe: 
20:46
without ever knowing that he was in prison or told he was in prison or where he was.

Gabe: 
20:49
He was driven around.

Gabe: 
20:50
He was captured at a train station and driven around for hours.

Gabe: 
20:54
So he didn't know if he was even in the country.

Gabe: 
20:56
It turns out he was about 20 minutes from his house, but he had no idea.

Gabe: 
21:00
And his family didn't know where he was for three months.

Gabe: 
21:02
And so that prison holds a lot of significance for his, I mean, I'm going to use the word

Gabe: 
21:08
trauma.

Gabe: 
21:08
I'm not sure he uses the same word in the same way because he doesn't, you know, he doesn't

Gabe: 
21:12
talk about those terms.

Gabe: 
21:13
so we went there uh several times with him um once by himself um and then the remarkable thing

Gabe: 
21:21
that you couldn't predict was that then gierke the psychology professor um and him started to

Gabe: 
21:27
form like a real i don't know relationship i don't it's not i wouldn't say friendship but

Gabe: 
21:31
a relationship or an exchange um relationship and uh he asked for a tour through peter's eyes

Gabe: 
21:39
of this prison because he had never allegedly been to one uh since the fall of the wall and so

Gabe: 
21:45
we had this last minute opportunity to film with peter in this prison and it was one of those

Gabe: 
21:51
situations where like we had just gotten back from a production trip we were tired jamie was

Sandra Abrams: 
21:56
i was 35 weeks pregnant 35 weeks and you're pregnant at the same time while all of this

Sandra Abrams: 
22:01
is happening i was pregnant throughout this entire production

Sandra Abrams: 
22:06
that's a story right in and of itself pregnant women directing their first film

Sandra Abrams: 
22:13
what are your tips good shoes

Gabe: 
22:19
but like you know like it was one of those things that we got home and then

Gabe: 
22:22
i had to like jamie couldn't by definition travel again so i had to go back by myself

Gabe: 
22:28
with a sound guy and the whole time we're just thinking like please i'll come early the baby

Gabe: 
22:33
Please help them early.

Gabe: 
22:35
And so it was a very fast trip back to capture this once in a lifetime opportunity.

Sandra Abrams: 
22:40
But you took advantage of it and you did it.

Sandra Abrams: 
22:43
I kind of want to talk about something that you had said, Jamie, again, going back to your directorial statement.

Sandra Abrams: 
22:49
You talked about the rise of the modern day surveillance system, you know, that the Stasi was the system they had and how they used informants and pressured people.

Sandra Abrams: 
23:00
But I'm thinking of what's happening here in our country recently.

Sandra Abrams: 
23:04
You know, the AG had a book in front of her at the House committee, you know, Google searches that the Congress people had done at the taking of the Georgia voter rolls.

Sandra Abrams: 
23:15
You know, no matter the sophistication of the system, you said they're all collecting the same type of data, you know, prized by the Stasi.

Sandra Abrams: 
23:23
Are people coming to you and saying, I see the connection?

Sandra Abrams: 
23:26
Is it elevating your film?

Sandra Abrams: 
23:28
Are you hearing anything different, you know, considering what's happening now?

Jamie: 
23:33
Yeah, one of my favorite lines in the film is at the very end, Peter and Englehart meet again after many years.

Jamie: 
23:40
And Peter's asking him about the surveillance system.

Jamie: 
23:43
And Englehart says, look, if you had the capabilities of today, it would be a paradise for us.

Jamie: 
23:48
You know, and I think that says it all.

Jamie: 
23:51
we're all willingly participating in the surveillance state that we live in right now

Jamie: 
23:57
every day. And I'm not suggesting that we don't carry around cell phones that track all of our

Jamie: 
24:03
data and, you know, sell them to the highest bidder. But I am suggesting that we need regulation

Jamie: 
24:11
on this. Europe is farther along than us because I think in some ways they've had

Jamie: 
24:17
major economies there have experiences with surveillance states.

Jamie: 
24:21
including Germany and Poland.

Jamie: 
24:23
You want to talk about audiences and how they react.

Jamie: 
24:25
We are international premiere for the films at the Warsaw International Film Festival.

Jamie: 
24:30
Speaking of Poland and, you know, every audience reacts differently to a film like this.

Jamie: 
24:37
We screen the film in Palo Alto and everybody wants to talk about tech, but also there were

Jamie: 
24:42
a couple of Chinese immigrants there and want to talk about how this is the state they lived

Jamie: 
24:45
in now.

Jamie: 
24:46
Like this is, this is current day China, you know, screening it in South by.

Jamie: 
24:50
again, a big tech city in Austin, people really laughed at all of the deep cut tech references

Jamie: 
24:59
in the film. Screening it in Warsaw, the room was dead silent throughout the entire film,

Jamie: 
25:06
not a sound. And at the end, they certainly get the today references, but they wanted to talk

Jamie: 
25:14
about how their own society is not dealing with this at all. And one of the main themes that we

Jamie: 
25:21
wanted people to see and understand is how the information bubbles that we live in on the internet

Jamie: 
25:30
today, how they're tearing us apart, how they are endangering our democracies, how they are making

Jamie: 
25:36
people really think that they don't actually have to do, engage in the kind of democracy

Jamie: 
25:42
that Peter and Engelhardt and Gierke and wrote that all of these guys are engaging in to their

Jamie: 
25:46
credits, which is reaching across the aisle and looking somebody in the face that you really don't

Jamie: 
25:52
agree with, really don't agree with, and trying to find a common narrative, trying to find some

Jamie: 
26:00
kind of common ground with which to work together, because without that, our democracy cannot

Jamie: 
26:06
function. And so this is a roundabout way of, I guess, talking about the themes of the film,

Jamie: 
26:13
but Gabe and I made this film with the feeling overall that it's a pro-democracy film.

Jamie: 
26:19
And that's what we want people to take away from it.

Gabe: 
26:21
We had a premiere in Berlin at the Zoo Palast, which is this beautiful theater in the heart of

Gabe: 
26:27
Berlin. And we had two sold out theaters and a really long Q&A where Peter and Gierke were on

Gabe: 
26:34
stage together answering questions which was quite a big deal um in the german press and but what was

Gabe: 
26:41
fascinating was that i'd say about a third of the discussion was around ice was around minneapolis

Gabe: 
26:47
because you know maybe we are in a situation where it's an incremental change and then you get to a

Gabe: 
26:52
place like oh i don't like this is not what most americans want is like masked guys snatching you

Gabe: 
26:58
know people from schools you know and traumatizing children and you know getting into physical

Gabe: 
27:04
and even shooting people, that was very resonant with the German audience in the context of

Gabe: 
27:12
this film.

Gabe: 
27:13
They make the connections very easily because of their lived experience.

Gabe: 
27:18
And I think that the basis is that we interviewed, again, we interviewed so many people that

Gabe: 
27:23
did not make the film.

Gabe: 
27:24
And one of them was Deepkin, the last mayor of West Berlin.

Gabe: 
27:28
And he just said the most simple and poignant line, which is you cannot live without trust

Gabe: 
27:33
in your neighbor.

Gabe: 
27:34
And that's true.

Gabe: 
27:35
You can't live without trusting your neighbor or withdraw trust in your family.

Gabe: 
27:40
And when you have a government setting up opportunities for you to call out your, you know, inform on your neighbors about things that you might just disagree with, that sets up a paranoia in a society that is not sustainable.

Gabe: 
27:56
You know, there's an article, I guess it was in the Post today, about there's a prankster, you know, a comedian who set up a fake tip line for people to call in to report somebody they think might be an illegal immigrant or an undocumented immigrant in our country.

Gabe: 
28:15
And that, thankfully, isn't real.

Gabe: 
28:18
But he gets over 100 calls on this, and you start to see how people are so willing to do that.

Gabe: 
28:25
I mean, you saw a lot of these things, you know, with anti-abortion laws where they're trying to use.

Gabe: 
28:31
You can report somebody, whether you have a connection to them or not.

Gabe: 
28:36
These type of dynamics that is a top-down setup is a very dangerous precedent for democracy.

Gabe: 
28:42
And it extends to many aspects of our life.

Gabe: 
28:46
You know, like one of the hallmarks of East German culture was self-censorship.

Gabe: 
28:50
Once you realize, once the culture realized that there's things you say in private and there's things you say in public,

Gabe: 
28:55
you self-censor. And that curbs expression, that it curbs relationships or trust. And

Gabe: 
29:03
are we doing that now with how we, you know, fear backlash on online about what we say? Like,

Gabe: 
29:09
there's a lot of things that, you know, there's not a one-to-one analogy. I think that would be

Gabe: 
29:13
a disrespect to these Germans to say that we are leaving an exact parallel experience,

Gabe: 
29:19
but there's certainly lessons that we can learn and apply to our modern world. So we try to avoid

Gabe: 
29:23
the worst of what may be coming.

Sandra Abrams: 
29:26
But Jamie, you mentioned

Sandra Abrams: 
29:28
your film's pro-democracy.

Sandra Abrams: 
29:29
Tell us, have you been able to get distribution

Sandra Abrams: 
29:32
for this film?

Jamie: 
29:33
Not yet. Not yet.

Jamie: 
29:36
It's rough out there.

Gabe: 
29:37
I would say that we knew from the beginning that this was a challenging

Gabe: 
29:40
film to distribute.

Gabe: 
29:40
You know, it is a

Gabe: 
29:43
German story,

Gabe: 
29:45
half of which has subtitles.

Gabe: 
29:47
And on the flip side, in German

Gabe: 
29:49
culture, for the older

Gabe: 
29:51
audience, it's weird to see a German

Gabe: 
29:52
speaking English.

Gabe: 
29:53
about a german topic the film is living a dual reality where we're winning all these awards

Gabe: 
29:59
inside germany like when we had our premiere the media went crazy we had articles in every single

Gabe: 
30:06
you know major publication and every single cultural um uh tv program and podcast like

Gabe: 
30:13
the response was significant but you know we're also living in an age where we have mergers and

Gabe: 
30:20
acquisitions nobody wants to do anything political you have the head of the Berlinale coming out and

Gabe: 
30:24
saying that we should not be wading into politics which to me in film and culture and art is wild

Gabe: 
30:31
to say that definitionally that is what we do in moments of political uncertainty or lack of

Gabe: 
30:39
clarity and to to suppress that artistic instinct is to undermine the entire craft so we are living

Gabe: 
30:45
in this very strange space. We have some distribution offers from some, let's say like

Gabe: 
30:51
non-traditional distributors, but the hope of getting a all rights deal or is, you know, is not,

Sandra Abrams: 
30:57
I don't think of the future of the film. Well, the film is The Spies Among Us. It follows Peter

Sandra Abrams: 
31:03
Kuip, who was the victim of the East German secret police, his journey to his own past and

Sandra Abrams: 
31:09
how he confronts members of the authoritarian surveillance system. It's from side-by-side

Sandra Abrams: 
31:15
studios. And I think you have the Cleveland International Film Festivals coming up.

Sandra Abrams: 
31:20
So you have that. And tell us, where can people learn more about the film?

Gabe: 
31:26
So I think the best thing to follow the film is the spiesamongus.film is the website. That's where

Gabe: 
31:31
we have a sign-up sheet. We're looking at alternate distribution so they can sign up to follow along.

Gabe: 
31:37
There's also all of our updated screening.

Gabe: 
31:41
And so you can follow thespiesamongus.film

Gabe: 
31:44
or our company's website,

Gabe: 
31:45
which is sidexsidestudios.com,

Gabe: 
31:48
side-by-side studios,

Gabe: 
31:49
but sidexsidestudios.com.

Sandra Abrams: 
31:51
Well, thank you, Jamie and Gabe,

Sandra Abrams: 
31:54
for joining Media Maker Spotlight.

Sandra Abrams: 
31:56
And we look forward to learning

Sandra Abrams: 
31:59
and hearing more about your film in the future.

Sandra Abrams: 
32:01
Thank you.

Jamie: 
32:03
Thanks, Sandra.

Jamie: 
32:03
Thanks, Sandra.

VO: 
32:05
Thanks for listening to Media Maker Spotlight from Women in Film and Video.

VO: 
32:10
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VO: 
32:17
This podcast is created by Sandra Abrams, Candice Block, Brandon Ferry, Tara Jabari, and Jerry Reinhardt.

VO: 
32:25
And edited by Michelle Kim.

VO: 
32:27
With audio production and mix by Steve Lack, audio.

VO: 
32:31
And Ed Saltzman.

VO: 
32:32
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VO: 
32:36
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VO: 
32:43
That's a wrap!