Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck made the Academy Award-winning The Lives of Others some years ago; then-Stranger writer Annie Wagner called it "the best German film I've seen in years." His new film may be even more ambitious: It's an emotional look at the upheaval German history seen through the eyes of an art student. As a child, he witnesses the rise of Nazism; as a young man, he falls in love with a fellow student in repressive East Germany—the daughter of a professor with a terrible secret. Incidentally, while critics have been appreciative, Gerhard Richter, on whose life this film is loosely based, is reportedly very unhappy with the film.