Based on a novel by athlete-turned-author Dorit Linke, writer-director Sarah Neumann’s feature debut is a gripping, youth-centred historical drama set during the final bulwark of authoritarianism in 1989 East Germany. That summer, twentysomething Hanna (Lena Urzendowsky, From Hilde, with Love), a gifted swimmer with Olympic ambitions, elects to abandon her podium dreams when best friend Andreas (Willi Geitmann) is targeted by the secret police for transgressions against the state. Their path to freedom? A treacherous, open-water swim across 50-kilometres of the Baltic Sea, with only a rope tethering them together. Neumann’s film was a multiple-prize winner at Saarbrücken’s Filmfestival Max Ophüls Preis, which celebrates emerging talent in German-language cinema.