East Berlin, 1989: a teenager pushed out of school by the state stumbles into the glamour of the GDR's underground fashion scene in this 2022 German drama from director Aelrun Goette.
What is In A Land That No Longer Exists about?
Suzie is expelled from school shortly before graduation and has to make her own way as a factory worker on the cable line. A photograph taken almost by chance changes everything, catching the eye of Elsa Wilbrodt, editor-in-chief of Sibylle, the GDR's fashion magazine, who puts Suzie on the cover. That single image pulls her into Berlin's underground creative circles, where she meets the gay fashion designer Rudi and the photographer Coyote. Surrounded by people building lives outside the state's rigid expectations, Suzie is forced to decide whether she has the courage to leave everything familiar behind for good.
About the cast
Marlene Burow plays Suzie, supported by Claudia Michelsen, Peter Schneider, David Schütter, Sabin Tambrea, Jördis Triebel, Hans Klima, and Sven-Eric Bechtolf. The ensemble spans generations, pairing newer faces with established names from German television and film to carry a story that moves between a factory floor and a magazine's glossy pages.
Context & significance
Directed by Aelrun Goette, the film is set against the final years of East Germany, using the real Sibylle magazine and its underground fashion world as a backdrop for a coming-of-age story about identity and constraint. Rather than framing 1989 through politics alone, the film stays close to Suzie's daily choices, letting the larger historical moment sit quietly underneath a story about art, friendship, and self-invention behind the Wall.
Watching In A Land That No Longer Exists on Ktime
In A Land That No Longer Exists is available on K-Time with both Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, giving Farsi-speaking viewers a choice in how they experience the film. The page itself is free to browse for anyone; watching requires only a K-Time account login, part of the platform's commitment to Farsi-first streaming for the Iranian diaspora.