7. Christa-Maria Sieland (The Lives Of Others)
East Germany, 1984, and subversive playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) is under surveillance by the Stasi. His apartment is bugged, his telephone tapped, and worse of all, his typewriter is a trap in waiting. After writing an article that exposes the state's downplaying of official suicide figures, the authorities close their net and demand the original manuscript. His girlfriend, Christa-Maria (Martina Gedeck), is torn between betraying her lover or having her acting career cut short. She resists, but after further threats, reluctantly informs the police that the typewriter is hidden under the floorboards. Two Stasi agents raid the apartment and, as they prise open the boards, Christa-Maria becomes overwhelmed with guilt and runs out into the street, where she is knocked down by a truck. In a cruel twist reminiscent of 'Romeo and Juliet', the typewriter is revealed to have been moved from its hiding place, yet by this point Christa-Maria doesn't know this. Instead, Hauptmann Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe), the Stasi agent tasked with spying on Dreyman, has concealed the evidence in order to protect the couple he has grown to love.