Synopsis:
After a breakdown, Rita returns to her childhood village. It is 1961. As she recovers, she remembers the past two years: her love for the chemist Manfred, ten years her senior; his enthusiasm about his new chemical process, which turned to bitter disappointment in the face of rejection; his escape to West Berlin a few weeks before the Wall was built; and his hope that she would follow him. This East German classic, praised by critics as one of Germany’s 100 Most Important Films, is based on Christa Wolf’s internationally-known novel, criticized in the GDR for questioning the construction of the Wall. Produced during a brief cultural thaw in the early 1960s, this film was strongly influenced by French Nouvelle Vague cinema.

Press Comments:
Konrad Wolf’s DEFA classic is one of the most important filmic debates about the German-German division until this day. - 3sat TV

Divided Heaven clearly [reflects] the rich stylistic currents that characterized European filmmaking in the early ‘sixties. – Joshua Feinstein, The Triumph of the Ordinary

Images of strict and restrained (black and white) beauty. - Süddeutsche Zeitung

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