The Lives of Others has won over worldwide audiences and critics, picking up 33 different awards including the 2007 Oscar for �Best Foreign Language Film of the Year.� It won three major prizes at last year's European Film Awards in Warsaw. After phenomenal success at the German box office, where it has taken more than $13 million, it also won seven awards at the German Lola film awards. In addition the film scored the Film Independent's Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film.

Set in 1984 before the fall of the Berlin Wall, we are dropped into a period of Germany�s history where everyone is either a spy or a suspect. State Security Captain Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler (M�he) is training students how to interrogate their suspects without mercy. He is unattached to his work, void professionally and personally making him one of the best drones in the system. Encouraged by Minister Hempf (Thieme,) Wiesler takes on a case of monitoring a seemingly spotless writer, Georg Dreyman (Koch,) to see if he is as co-sure as he appears. As the film rolls on Wiesler gets so enraptured in Georg�s life full of love, passion, honesty and art that he becomes more of a participate than an observer. Wiesler then discovers the corrupt injustice of this particular case regarding Hempf�s attempts at gaining Christa-Maria (the writer�s girlfriend) for himself. Thus Wiesler takes the plot into his own hands and begins to cover Georg�s tracks making sure that Georg�s life won�t be ruined, but how well can the top Stasi officer cover his tracks?
 
A stunning cast was picked for The Lives of Others, but it is M�he that really carries the film; he soaks up his character with ease making his performance; expressions and movements small and subtle like the rest of the film. As the deadly informer he shifts to the quiet hero softly and believably.

Screenwriter and director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck took four years researching and writing about this subject before even thinking about filming. Therefore the depth at which the topics of the GDR, Stasi officers, locations, spying techniques, amongst everything else was historically correct. The filming took less than 40 days, and he used original locations such as the former Stasi headquarters themselves to keep everything as realistic and natural as possible.

In keeping with the naturalist feel to the script Donnersmarck shot in 35mm cinemascope with APRI camera and Kodak film material which took the post production crew about a year to finish, but the end result is an encapsulating textured picture not masked by effects.

With such a period piece to tackle it was a delight to have Oscar winner composer Gabriel Yared (The Talented Mr. Ripley, The English Patient) added to the credits. The tickly soft eerie string compositions add to the tension and drama without brazenly overtaking the story.