39 minutes / Color
/ English subtitles
Release: 2010
Copyright: 2009
RABBIT A LA BERLIN is the 2010 Academy Award-nominated story of thousands of wild rabbits which lived in the Death Zone of the Berlin Wall. This is the first film showing the story of the Wall and the reunification of Germany seen from such an unusual perspective - from the rabbits' point of view.
As if the green belt between the two walls was designed for those animals - full of untouched grass, the predators stayed behind the wall and the guards made sure no one disturbed the rabbits. They had been living there for 28 years, enclosed but safe. With the fall of the Wall in 1989, the rabbits had to look for another place to live.
RABBIT A LA BERLIN is an allegorical, self-described "nature documentary about socialism" which brings together the history of Eastern Europe as seen from the rabbits' unique perspective.
"Teasing and shrewd, a floppy-eared fable about the uneasy trade-offs between liberty and security. This cheeky parable plays like a totalitarian WATERSHIP DOWN."—Jeannette Catsoulis, The New York Times
"If Werner Herzog remade WATERSHIP DOWN, this would be his template…a lovely modern mini-myth, sarcastic and Beatrix Potter-y in turn."—Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice
"The film is funny, witty, perverse, and yet seems perfectly balanced.
Konopka plays the viewers' emotions with a skill of a virtuoso."—Marta Brzezinska, Filmweb
"The cult of Agnes Varda and Chris Marker will cherish Bartek Konopka and Anna Wydra's RABBIT A LA BERLIN, a bewitching documentary about the wild rabbits that took residence and prospered within the well-guarded strip of earth of the Berlin Wall and what happened to the critters after the fall of the wall in 1989."—Ed Gonzalez, The House Next Door
"The movie is arty and stylish and weird, mixing historical footage with dramatic shots of rabbits in an odd, novel way that often feels as much like fiction as documentary."—Steve Pond, The Wrap
"An allegorical study of a totalitarian system. The rabbits are used as a device to burrow into recent east European social history. Just as the rabbits were expelled from their makeshift Eden when the Berlin wall came down, many in the Soviet bloc had to adjust to the strange new post-communist world."—Geoffrey MacNab, The Guardian
"Is a very clever fable, and as such it probably avails itself to more than one perspective. ...A fun and thoughtful film to watch, and I would expect that it would spawn some lively discussion and analysis."—Anthropology Review Database
Select Accolades
The Soviet regime in Estonia went head to head with J.R. Ewing and the heroes of Western television...and lost.
Jaak Kilmi | 2010 | 80 minutes | Color | English subtitles
Punks who struggled with Hungary's communist regime discuss their experiences, music and mohawks.
Lucile Chaufour | 2015 | 51 minutes | Color | English subtitles
An examination of German Jewish life and culture and the lasting intellectual, moral and spiritual void that loss has meant to their fatherland.
Nurith Aviv | 2010 | 30 minutes | Color | English subtitles
