Two families attempt a daredevil plan to escape the GDR with a homemade hot air balloon, but it crashes just before the border. The Stasi finds traces of this attempt to escape and immediately starts investigations, while the two families are forced to build a new escape balloon. With each passing day the Stasi is closer on their heels – a nerve-wracking race against time begins.
"Kruso" tells of the last summer before the Wall came down on the small island of Hiddensee in the Baltic Sea. Beyond state-organized tourism, the isolated island became a kind of artist colony every year and a place of longing for dropouts and alternatives. Due to its proximity to Denmark, Hiddensee was also the starting point for the flight across the Baltic Sea.
13 August 1961: the GDR closes the sector borders in Berlin. The city is divided overnight. Escape to the West becomes more dangerous every day. But on September 14, 1962, exactly one year, one month and one day after the Wall was built, a group of 29 people from the GDR managed to escape spectacularly through a 135-meter tunnel to the West. For more than 4 months, students from West Berlin, including 2 Italians, dug this tunnel. When the tunnel builders ran out of money after only a few meters of digging, they came up with the idea of marketing the escape tunnel. They sell the film rights to the story exclusively to NBC, an American television station.
1978. In a desperate act of love, a plane is hijacked in East Germany and forced to land in the American Sector of West Berlin, triggering a Cold War crisis and forcing 60 hapless passengers to decide in minutes whether to give up everything and stay in the West...
The summer of 1986 begins on a promising note for Erfurt sisters Catrin and Maja Streesemann – they’ve finally received a travel permit for their first holiday at Lake Balaton. The only thing is, they have no idea that they’re being watched by the Stasi as the spies in swimming trunks of the Balaton Brigade have been watching out for East Germans attempting to escape to the West, with the holiday resort as a starting point. Catrin is quick to make new friends at the campsite, especially winsome Rudi from Mühlhausen, whose overtures clearly aim for more than just friendship; younger Maja is magically attracted to the glamour of the elegant Balaton-Residenz luxury hotel where only Western tourists are allowed to stay. Fate leads them not only into the Balaton-Residenz, but also to Tamás, the Hungarian hotel boss. Catrin immediately falls for the charming Hungarian, but Maja is the one to steal a kiss from him at the first opportunity, casting a shadow on the sisters’ otherwise close relationship. And the next disaster comes along, as their mother Kirsten has every reason to believe that her daughters’ trip to Hungary could wreak havoc on the family after an ominous phone call from Hungary. Using a pretext, she persuades her husband Karl to start the Trabant and drive after Maja and Catrin.
