Innocent man, guilty system, and the cellmate from actual hell.
In the fall of 1945, nineteen year-old Mark Niebuhr, is accused of murder and is jailed as a prisoner of war in Warsaw, Poland. He maintains his claim of innocence throughout long periods of solitary confinement. When Mark is placed among a group of Polish criminals, he becomes the target of their aggression. Later, Mark experiences true hell in a communal cell with fanatical German war criminals. Turning Point is based on actual events from Hermann Kant's novel of the same name.
Acting
Groth's physical transformation under psychological siege.
Direction
Beyer's cramped framing turns cells into character.
Director
Frank Beyer
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Banned in West Germany for years due to its unflinching portrayal of post-war German prisoners. Hermann Kant, a prominent East German author, wrote the novel while working as a POW interrogator.
Director Frank Beyer was the only DEFA filmmaker to achieve international recognition during the Cold War, yet this film—his most politically dangerous—nearly ended his career.
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