At once a political thriller and human drama, The Lives of Others begins in East
Berlin in 1984, five years before Glasnost and the fall of the Berlin Wall and
ultimately takes us to 1991, in what is now the reunited Germany. It traces the
gradual disillusionment of Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe), a highly skilled
officer who works for the Stasi, East Germany's all-powerful secret police who ensure
their claim to power with a ruthless system of control and surveillance. Its
vast network of informers at one time numbered 200,000 out of a population of
17 million. Their goal was to know everything about "the lives of
others."