A treasure chest of films completely unknown to Italian audiences is jealously guarded in the cinema archive of the former German Democratic Republic. These films, many of them of superb quality, testify vividly to a unique situation in the panorama of 20th century Europe, mirroring a parallel world caught between the stringent propaganda regulations enforced by the regime and movie directors' artistic strategies to wriggle past them in their determination to highlight the inconsistencies rife in the country without falling foul of the regime's censors. These directors' efforts were often wasted, and indeed numerous "dangerous" masterpieces only saw the light of day years after the Berlin Wall had fallen. The films produced by the DEFA, the sole film production company in East Germany, offer us a valuable glimpse of the political and cultural climate that held sway in East Germany and provide us with a unique opportunity to study the way in which every regime reacts to the cinema, using it as a tool for mass mobilisation, for drumming up a consensus and for educating the people. Join us on this astonishing journey into a movie world rich in inconsistencies and contradictions which focuses on the younger generation and its thirst for emancipation, following the leitmotif of great cinema and of directors whose work needs to be rediscovered, directors who have made their indelible mark on German cinema history.