Comedyking Michael "Bully" Herbig ventured into a thriller for the first time with "Ballon". To mark the turning point, the masterpiece is on television.
The GDR escape thriller "Ballon" (2018) by Michael "Bully" Herbig (52) captivates across the board. After the cinema audience, the television viewers can now see this for themselves. Sat.1 shows the award-winning flick on Sunday (September 27th, 8:15 pm) and thus shortly before the 30th anniversary of German-German reunification on October 3rd.
That's the story of the film
Summer 1979 in Thuringia: The Strelzyk families (Friedrich Mücke, Karoline Schuch, Jonas Holdenrieder, Tilman Döbler) and Wetzel (David Kross, Alicia von Rittberg, Till Patz, Ben Teichmann) worked on their daring plan for two years, with one person built hot air balloon to flee from the GDR across the border to Bavaria.
On a first attempt, however, the balloon crashes just before the border. The Stasi discovered the attempted escape and began the investigation under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel Seidel (Thomas Kretschmann). The two families are working on a new escape attempt under great time pressure.
How worth seeing is the first face-off thriller?
The film is based on a true story: on September 16, 1979, the Strelzyk and Wetzel families from Pößneck, Thuringia, managed the sensational escape in a self-made hot air balloon across the inner-German border from the GDR to Bavaria. A good two hours of high tension await the audience. How serious the filmmaker was with the terrain he was unfamiliar with is evident in the first few scenes.
What fans of the bully comedies will recognize in this film is the great attention to detail. The equipment, mask and costumes effortlessly transport you back to the GDR era. Set design, camera, light and music also provide the usual amount of atmosphere. The cast is excellently selected down to the smallest supporting role. And fans of the "Eberhofer" thrillers will recognize someone again. Unlike the dog Ludwig in "Niederkaltenkirchen", the four-legged friend in Bully's film provides a solid moment of shock.
The balloon
Another main actor of the bully thriller is made of fabric. The 32 meter high hot air balloon was specially constructed for the filming. It is a faithful replica of the Strelzyk-Wetzel balloon. The balloon envelope, made of 1245 square meters of colored fabric, weighs 170 kilograms and can hold 4,200 cubic meters of hot air. What an effort, one might say. But it was worth it – then as now!