Whispers of Freedom: Dreams Shatter and Hearts Break in Chris Gueffroy Biopic

Brandon Ashplant’s Whispers of Freedom is a Cold War-era biopic of Chris Gueffroy, a young man whose tragedy is that he does not live to see the cruel ironies of life. At twenty-five minutes running time, the film allows itself the room to really settle in and get a sense of Chris’ personality (more than his world); what emerges is the portrait of a shonen-esque protagonist, driven by the restless spirit of anybody corralled into a life of bad choices. 

The irony of dreaming of the US as the extreme opposite of that would be lost on 20 year-old Chris (and a good lot of people), stuck in East Berlin in 1989, whose possessions include a mini US flag. But irony is the thematic concept underlying this tragic tale: Chris died trying to cross over the wall on February 6, 1989, the last to be killed by weapons. The Iron Curtain would be lifted nine months later. 

Questions of chance and futility do feel a little subsumed overall by the dominant influence of the dramatic dimensions of the story, but it is hard to put aside once you begin to entertain the thought. What if he had grit his teeth and waited? Is this youthful folly or simply the burden of the future’s unknowability we must all individually and collectively bear? Grappling with possible consequences of each option is a well-worn exercise, and precisely because it never gets any easier. 

The colour scheme foregrounds Chris’ emotional experience of living under an oppressive regime: bleakness seeps into the yellow lighting as thoroughly as it reigns in dimmer scenes. Almost all scenes—even exterior ones—take place with the flat blocking of walls in the background. Production took place in East Berlin, and the production design largely prioritises period authenticity, which makes the film a particularly strong draw, especially for niche audiences. 

The main characters of the supporting cast include Chris’ mother, Karin (Wendy Makkena) and his friend, Christian Gaudian (Darragh Cowley), who had attempted the escape with him. The film opens with Karin, and it places her in an emotional, metaphysical plot point, a well-written moment that really honours tragedy as genre. 

Whispers of Freedom, whose title seems to invoke Wings of Desire in an East Berlin-West Berlin equation, climaxes with Chris’ failure to escape to the latter’s land. Fittingly, though it builds up to the moment, the actual moment is brief and boiled down. The dream, which was as much about resolute indignation, shatters with the unceremonious brittleness of glass. Funny how they do that under brutal structures everywhere. 

Watch Whispers of Freedom Short Film Trailer