Producer's Note
Fabian Halbig (NORDPOLARIS) on „SORRY Comrade“
As a young production company, we have been working with Vera Brückner for many years. Her penchant for special stories, which she observes closely and tells with a strong visual signature, became apparent early on. Her talent for combining documentary with staged moments became more apparent with each project. In 2019, when Vera told us about the love and escape story around Hedi and Karl, both of whom she knows personally, I was already fully convinced of her as a filmmaker. In addition, there was this really incredible story, which in my eyes combines political, historical explosiveness with great entertainment value. To make this context tangible also for younger "post-transition generations", of which we ourselves are a part, and to contribute an emotional, entertaining, but also reflective contribution to a still current "borders" discourse, was always the declared goal for us as young filmmakers. For the shoot, we had originally planned a road trip through Romania with the protagonists, in order to retell the important stages of this special escape story.
But then in the summer of 2020, the Corona pandemic threw a spanner in the works. Therefore, two weeks before shooting began, we decided to reschedule the entire shoot and have the film take place in fictitious locations throughout Germany. As is so often the case in filmmaking, the advantage of this decision, which was certainly not without courage, only became apparent afterwards: The special style and the sheer unbelievable but true story is once again underlined by the fictionalized images. The result is now a "documentary film", as Vera always says so beautifully. The fact that we were able to complete this unusual production "in time" was only due to Vera's terrific preparatory work and the talented team. Until the very end we worked on the shot material, edited, added archive material and music, discussed controversially, trustfully and always constructively. This is what filmmaking must be like!