Karla

1965
2h 8m

IMDb RATING

7.5/10

204

YOUR RATING

Drama Romance

An idealistic teacher is shocked to discover her pupils are already cynical and opportunistic. Her colleague soon grows resentful when she uses new and challenging techniques to help her stu... Read allAn idealistic teacher is shocked to discover her pupils are already cynical and opportunistic. Her colleague soon grows resentful when she uses new and challenging techniques to help her students overcome obstacles.An idealistic teacher is shocked to discover her pupils are already cynical and opportunistic. Her colleague soon grows resentful when she uses new and challenging techniques to help her students overcome obstacles.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.5/10

204

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Awards
- 2 wins

Photos5

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Storyline

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Did you know

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Trivia
Even though the film was produced in East Germany by the government-funded DEFA studio, the shoot could not be completed and the film was heavily edited and finally banned from being shown on the grounds that it was "nihilistic, skeptical and hostile". After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the film was reconstructed by cinematographer Günter Ost and presented at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival in 1990. The final version contains some elliptical editing and a few jump cuts resulting from the incomplete shoot, but the film has a coherent narrative.

Connections
Featured in Auge in Auge - Eine deutsche Filmgeschichte (2008)

User reviews2

Review

Featured review

10/10

Famous on & outside the white screen

'Karla' is a young female teacher, who just completed her studies.

Entering her first teaching job, she is determined to educate her pupils in indepentently thinking, instead of indoctrinating them with Communist slogans. As was common practice in the Communist East Germany (DDR) of 1965.

Inevitably Karla gets into trouble for this, and that's what this films is about. We see a fascinating traingle of Karla, her director, and a guardian of the education board.

The story of this film also develops outside the white screen: in 1965 'Karla' was forbidden by de DDR-authorities. And was not earlier restored than in 1990, after the DDR's collapse.

In the meantime, director Herrmann Zschoche managed to produce 19 other good DDR-films - with official approval.

Back to 'Karla': today, this film not only lives on as being good; it also has become a symbol of the DDR film-censuring.