Günter Schabowski

A small town in Salento, some Soviet rock bands, CCCP and an 8-day trip between Moscow and Leningrad. The incredible story of a tour between two worlds that would never be the same again.

Hammer & Tickle: The Communist Joke Book is a 2006 propaganda documentary film about "jokes" under the Soviet Union.

In 1989, Jenny Ecker, an 18-year-old daughter of an entrepreneur, flees from Hildesheim to the east - out of love. The teenager has fallen hopelessly in love with an East Berliner. Jenny’s parents are foaming from wrath and offer a reward: One-hundred thousand, later even a million, deutschmarks for whoever brings them their daughter back. The prospect of so much money gets east and west into quite a disarray – and in the end, the Wall really falls.

A detailed reconstruction of the events from Nov. 9th to 11th, 1989, which led to the Berlin wall tumbling down, on a local, national and international level.

The film talks about the rise and fall of the two most influential protagonists in GDR-politics. In succession, over long stretches even together, Ulbricht and Honecker determined the course of the GDR, of course without ever getting out of being a satellite state to the big brother in Moscow. The film looks for the caesura and crucial points in the power game between Ulbricht and Honecker.