It took five episodes of almost an hour each to tell the story of post-Wall Berlin. To explain what this sprawling, fascinating and complex city has become. Five episodes which, from 1989 to today, dissect a little of the Berlin soul. From popular utopias of the 1990s to disproportionate real estate projects, from leprous facades with their bullet holes still visible to the steel skyscrapers of a gentrified metropolis, from squatted buildings to the appetites of unscrupulous financiers, from affordable rents to unaffordable housing , Berlin continues to evolve. Sometimes brutally.
This exciting series opens with the fall of the Wall, on the night of November 9 to 10, 1989, and the months following this exceptional event. An anarchic, exciting time. But also very complicated since it involves converging two cities into one. Between the opulent West and the dilapidated East, we must forge links. Easier said than done. Public transport is suddenly overloaded, violent evictions multiply in the degraded buildings of the Mitte district, but a wind of freedom seems to blow over the “gray city”, which officially becomes the capital of Germany again on October 3, 1990 and established as the cradle of street art in Europe.
Reinventing town planning, cleaning up homes, transforming the banks of the Spree, authorizing certain squats, developing green spaces: the challenges are numerous. “Berlin is as creative as New York! But it is cheap and peaceful while New York is dangerous and expensive,” summarized a political leader at the time.
“Poor and sexy”
The wealth of filmed archives allows you to discover the metamorphoses of the German city. Parties in unlikely places, demonstrations against rising rents, gang wars: Berlin is not a docile city. It is also a place where local political leaders, more or less competent, try to get the city moving, with varying success.
The numerous testimonies from artists, financiers, former students and political actors allow us to better understand how this very special place is transformed over time. And we remember that before becoming a world metropolis, Berlin was the capital of unemployment.
At the beginning of the 2000s, here was the city “poor and sexy”, according to the famous marketing slogan of its former mayor, the social democrat Klaus Wowereit, who, from 2001, tried to make it a stronghold of tourism then that economic and social problems remain numerous. Behind the images of partygoers from all over Europe, the youth of disadvantaged neighborhoods, such as in Neuköllnn, continue to suffer from poverty and racism. What is also attractive in this documentary series are the stories of emblematic night spots which, at one point, made Berlin’s party reputation: from Tresor to Bar 25, including the legendary Ufo.
Other aspects covered: the financial scandals which burdened municipal finances with, as a high point, the scandal of the new airport, work on which began in September 2006 was to be completed in 2011. Results? Colossal budget overruns and an effective opening in… October 2020. But, as one witness sums it up: “Despite the politics and thanks to its people, Berlin is a great city! »