The Lives of Others

East Berlin, 1984. Stasi agent Gerd Wiesler is assigned to spy on playwright Georg Dreyman and his partner, actress Christa-Maria, suspected of dissident activities. As he listens in on their conversations and reads their letters, Wiesler begins to live vicariously through them and to question his own system of values. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film with this delicate and morally complex portrait of state surveillance in German cinema.

The Lives of Others is the most emotionally intelligent surveillance film in recent cinema. Wiesler's moral transformation is gradual, believable, and devastating. The ending is one of the most perfect in 2000s European cinema.