TRAILER

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Bertha DocHouse London, UK

Karl Marx City at the Durban International Film Festival, South Africa July 2017

Karl Marx City at DocAviv, Israel May 2017

Karl Marx City at Indie Lisboa, Portugal May 2017

Laemmle Monica Film Center, LA April 21 – April 27, 2017

Film Forum, New York March 29 – April 25, 2017

New York Times Critic’s Pick: “… a smart, highly personal addition to the growing syllabus of distressingly relevant cautionary political tales. … The mystery of her (Epperlein’s) father’s life and death provides Karl Marx City with suspense, and with a concrete sense of profound moral and emotional stakes. Repressive regimes excel at creating ambiguity, at making complicity easier than resistance and at blurring the lines between heroes and villains. Ms. Epperlein and Mr. Tucker, shooting in black and white and making judicious use of historical footage, brilliantly evoke a landscape of gray areas. They also uncover glimmers of decency, loyalty and solidarity — the tiny cracks in the totalitarian edifice that foretold its eventual and inevitable collapse.” A.O.Scott, The New York Times 3/29/2017

“… a shrewd personal inquiry into the mass psychology of fear and oppression … a film that ingeniously subverts the weaponry of Cold War-era surveillance, employing the tools of the Stasi’s intelligence-gathering operation toward a far more principled end. Whereas the secret police sought to root out and destroy even the slightest hint of subversive activity among a terrified populace, Epperlein and Tucker sift through these illicit materials — and forge their own fresh images and interviews — with an eye toward illuminating the truth and possibly even vindicating the innocent. … Shot in evocative black and white, Karl Marx City is a sleek, absorbing detective story, a fascinating primer on mass surveillance in the pre-Snowden era, and a roving memoir of East German life.”, Justin Chang, LA Times 4/201/2017

The Leonard Lopate Show, 03/29/2017

“A hypnotic work of cinematic autobiography that leverages one woman’s fear to exhume the paranoia that once defined an entire country.”, David Ehrlich, Indiewire 3/28/2017

“[A] must-see… An essayistic, quietly moving look at another lost world… The movie
draws you in quickly with its intelligence, its restrained emotions and its jaw-dropping
period material, which includes some wildly creepy Stasi surveillance imagery.”, Manohla Dargis, The New York Times 10/10/2016

“Karl Marx City offers eerie parallels to the rise in surveillance today. (It) makes for a particularly resonant warning from the not-so-distant past… doesn’t have a whiff of the narcissism that plagues so many first-person documentaries. Epperlein offers Karl Marx City as her own act of painful transparency, an essential warning about what happens to societies when ordinary citizens are being watched.” Scott Tobias, Variety 9/20/2016

“A compelling family mystery wrapped in Cold War history. Dozens of documentaries have been made about the repressive Communist regimes of the former Eastern bloc, but few have been as visually striking or as deeply personal as Karl Marx City. Part espionage thriller¨ part family memoir, and part timely warning about the dangers of state surveillance. A key joy of Karl Marx City is its strong, arty aesthetic.” Stephen Dalton, The Hollywood Reporter 9/11/2016

Included in “Fifteen Films Not to Miss” at the NYFF “More than a movie about one family’s history, or even about one country’s history, this is a fascinating conversation about history itself, the very act of forgetting, and the persistence of memory.” Bilge Ebiri, The Village Voice 9/29/2016

“Karl Marx City is a stunner — an impressively inventive take on the personal doc that, with the sinister banality of its archival footage, expands from the personal to the political before concluding with a breathtakingly perfect ending.” Scott Macaulay, Filmmaker Magazine 10/14/2016

BBC AMERICA –TALKING MOVIES Christian Blauvelt (USA) – Interview with Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein 9/17/2016

WORLD PREMIERE of Karl Marx City at the Toronto International Film Festival, Canada Sept 2016

“Provocative and personal… Eloquently presents a culture of intense paranoia… A director putting oneself front and center in their documentary can be a risky move, but here it pays off.” Abbey Bender, Metro 10/16/2016

“So damn good… Lean, smart, quick, well-made, and unsparing, a documentary that wastes nothing and manages to say everything it wants to say in the most articulate way possible. Maybe more striking than the film’s revelations and conclusions is its sense of craft. (Epperlein and Michael Tucker) capture ‘Karl Marx City’ almost entirely in black and white, combining their own materials with Stasi surveillance footage, declassified and at their disposal as an investigative tool; the stark tones, coupled with the duo’s sharp eye for composition, clash with the film’s core ambiguities, layering aesthetic complexity to the complexity of its subject matter. The monochrome beauty enhances the unsettled atmosphere of ‘Karl Marx City’ as Epperlein’s pacing expands the scale of her quest. It’s a remarkable picture of inbound focus and outbound ambitions.” Andy Crump, The Playlist 9/9/2016

“Part mystery thriller, part autobiography, part meta-examination… [An] extraordinary film… Epperlein’s narrative is so wonderfully compelling, with mixed aspects of expectation and innuendo, that the result on screen is not simply fascinating but also wonderfully cinematic. The film manages to create a wonderful mix of sophistication and nuance while remaining accessible… It offers unique insights into a truly disturbing and extraordinary moment in time and place.” Jason Gorber, POV Magazine 9/11/2016

“As Epperlein and Tucker attempt to reconstruct the contours of a lost nation and a deceased family member, Karl Marx City is beautiful, raw, and haunting in a way that a fictionalized account like The Lives of Others could never be.” Michael Zelenko, The Verge 9/19/2016