The German Film “Two to One”(Zwei zu Eins), in its word-play on a soccer win, is set in the former East Germany (GDR) shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification. Set in the Eastern town of Halberstadt currency is ready to switch its soon-to-be-worthless East-Mark into West-Mark dollars. Friends Maren (Sandra Hüller), Robert (Max Riemelt) and Volker (Ronald Zehrfeld), who have known and loved each other since childhood in the summer of 1990, are thrown into quite an adventure!
By chance the three find millions of GDR paper currency in an old mining shaft. Stored there because the bills were “too good a commodity” to burn, their new friend (Peter Kurth) explains the reason for this old money storage. With his help they smuggle out backpacks full of money.
Together with their buddies, the three who knew how to play against the old government supervision, and along with friends and neighbors they develop an ingenious system to exchange the now worthless money for goods and outwit the incoming Westerners and their system of capitalism. When in the few days, then weeks, before the final two-to-one exchange for their old currency, they can become quite rich! Because if they stick together now – they learned that over many years existing in the German East – and play smart, this summer will be a great adventure and maybe, they imagine, when they hold all this money in their hands, count it and convert it into goods, it will be a big turning point in their lives.
The fun of fooling their own People’s Police a little and bypassing them with a sophisticated rope transport system they will hope land a really big coup. The ungratefully deported bigwigs of the old regime can also be won over in this scheme, and right at the very end the “Treuhand”,the organization redistributing wealth, gives them what they have always used as a means of building their own socialist state, their VEB (People’s Own Enterprise) for just a few Deutsch-Marks. When they realize that with this home enterprise, too, they had been used as cheap suppliers for the West, and their illusions fall away completely.
What remains is their love and friendship for each other. Hueller, Riemelt, Zehrfeld, and especially Peter Kurth, Ursula Werner, and Olli Dittrich and Uwe Preuss are wonderful East-German actors playing out their own family’s histories.
Two to One is a comedy for those who know and those who want to know about what went on in both German states or love a good situation comedy. In theaters check your local listings.