Sven Friedrich

This film was prepared as a introduction to a series of opera broadcasts on German television. It depicts the behind-the-scenes manoeuvrings in preparation for the annual opera festival in Bayreuth.

Tracing a decade of East German football, survivors of the Cold War tell a story of betrayal, murder, and manipulation in a revealing insight into how the Stasi secret police saw football as more than a game.

The stories of Jewish cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who survived Auschwitz, and of star conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, who worked with the Nazis, provide insight. The film centers around two people who represent musical culture during the Third Reich - albeit in very different ways. Wilhelm Furtwängler was a star conductor; Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the cellist of the infamous Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz. Both shared a love for the classical German music.