Ventos da liberdade

How two families engineer their escape from Communist East Germany to the West is excellent on all fronts: a gripping story line, a great director and actors, and the supporting soundtrack. The suspense builds and continues throughout the movie. Plenty of twists and turns to keep the audience engaged.

I saw this film at the theatre this evening and I must admit, it captured and captivated me from the very first scene right up until the final climax.

The language barrier and English subtitles didn't affect the suspense level one bit, quite on the contrary. The fact that it's based on a true story just made it that much more entertaining and worthwhile to see.

The cast is truly "unbelievable", not literally speaking! This film just goes to prove that having a good script, actors and director completely compensates for having a low budget. You don't need a hundred million dollars to make a great movie and this is a fine example.

The plot and characters are so alive and vivid. You can feel their tensions and fears. This is definitely a movie to be seen as a family. The family values displayed are invaluable. Truly inspiring.

Great Actors, thrilling action, phantastic film music. Director Michael Herbig finds the right tonality to tell this true story. Must See!

There isn't much bad to write about Ballon. I don't know what people could dislike about this movie. To me it was entertaining, with quite a lot of suspense once you're into the story, a good cast (even the kids), and it's all nicely shot. I understand everybody was suspicious of the Stasi at that time, your best friend could betray you, but in this case I think they exaggerated a bit in order to make it more suspensful. But the suspense was the good thing about the story, plus the fact that it's based on a true story which made it even more appealing. It's one of the better German movies I've seen lately, certainly worth a watch if you like escape movies.

Balloon is a solid and unpretentious movie built around a cat-and-mouse game between infamous Stasi and two families trying to escape East Germany in a home-made hot air balloon. If it weren't based on a true story it would be difficult to believe how much risk some people would be willing to take with the life of their families while their day to day lives weren't really threatened by the system as long as they played along. However, once their initial attempt for escape fails, they realized they were being chased by Stasi and became desperate to flee the country no matter how.

Balloon has an engaging story, good direction, decent acting performance and above-the-average entertainment value. The recreation of 70's East Germany is well-done and convincing. After the first failing attempt, the pace of the movie indeed sags a bit, especially with the Berlin scenes, but it quickly picks up with the tension and drama kept tight till the end. It's worth watching and highly recommended.