Your Unknown Brother

One of a group of little-known East German films screened at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 2005, Ulrich Weiss' 1981 Your Unknown Brother is a psychological study of an anti-Nazi activist released from prison in 1935, nervous about returning to his dangerous political life, especially since he suspects that his contact within the underground is a government informant. Often visually arresting, employing spare compositions to build an almost claustrophobic atmosphere, the film's virtues are more cerebral than emotional: little sympathy is built for the withdrawn protagonist, and the plot of this inordinately slow feature consists of a vaguely connected chain of talky episodes featuring nebulous characters, rather than a strongly developed and propulsive narrative. Presented with an excellent transfer, DVD extras include newsreels, an interview with a Communist woman who was part of the resistance, and a text essay on the film. Except for those collections with special interest in East German film or Communist anti-fascism, this is not a necessary purchase. (F. Swietek)