Westflug (4½ Stars)

This film has never been released in English. Its title means "Flight to the West". It's the true story about the hijacking of the Polish airplane LOT 165 on August 30th 1978. For reasons unknown to me the names of the hijacker and the other main characters have been changed. Maybe they didn't give their agreement to the film? As far as I can tell the story is accurate, with only slight dramatization to make it more interesting. I'll use the names of the characters in the film.

Michael Franjek was an engineer for a West German firm who was doing a contract in Eberswalde, an East German town about 40 miles from West Berlin. While there he met and fell in love with a waitress called Anja Rautenberg. He made a plan to smuggle Anja and her 12-year-old daughter into West Germany with false passports, which he would give them while they were on holiday in Danzig, Poland. Anja's work colleague Jürgen Treske would accompany Anja, posing as her husband.

But then things went wrong. The East German secret police had been observing the trio for months, and they had informants who told them of their plans. Michael was arrested on the train to Poland and never delivered the passports. Jürgen had an idea. Using a toy gun he bought in a Polish market he hijacked a plane flying from Danzig to East Berlin, forcing it to land in West Berlin.

On their arrival the American armed forces arrested Jürgen and Anja, although Anja was soon released because she had not participated in the hijacking. The other passengers on the plane were offered the possibility of remaining in the West, which a large number of them accepted. The hijacking was an embarrassment for the West German government, because on the one hand it openly supported East Germans who wanted to escape, but on the other hand they had only recently signed an agreement with East Germany agreeing to extradite plane hijackers. The solution was that the hijacker had been arrested in the American sector of Berlin, so he would have to be tried by an American court. At first things looked bad; Jürgen was facing up to 10 years in prison. Then, after six months of being held by the Americans his lawyer realised he had never been read his rights ("You have the right to remain silent", etc). Because of this his arrest and imprisonment was unlawful and he could sue the American government for $600,000. In the end a compromise was reached: Jürgen dropped his charges and allowed himself to be tried in return for the Americans buying Michael Franjek's freedom. As it turned out, Jürgen was sentenced to nine months imprisonment, of which he only served a few days because he had already been held for almost nine months.

That's the story. I think that spoilers aren't misplaced in the case of true stories. The film started off slowly. The first half hour, the beginning of the romance and the introduction of the main characters was dull. It could have been dealt with quicker, or maybe in a livelier fashion. But the actual plane hijacking and the aftermath were gripping.

I've since found out that an American film called "Judgement in Berlin" has been made about the same incident. It seems that it's a courtroom drama, so it probably goes into the legal issues in more detail. I intend to watch it soon.