Originally filmed by the late director Sydney Pollack in 1972, Amazing Grace documents the recording of Aretha Franklin’s live album of the same name at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles. Accompanied by the Southern California Community Choir, the resulting album became the most successful of Franklin’s entire career and remains one of the best-selling gospel albums of all time. Due to production issues, however, the filmed footage became impossible to synchronise, and the project was shelved indefinitely.

Now having been unearthed and completed, Aretha Franklin’s electrifying performance can finally be experienced more than 45 years after its initial recording.

PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY

It’s 1979 in East Germany at the height of the Cold War. No longer able to bear their government’s oppressive regime, the Strelzyk and Wetzel families decide to plan a grand escape to the West by a homemade hot air balloon, secretly built from scratch over the course of 18 months. Their plan to cross the border to freedom, however, puts them in the sights of the diligent and unforgiving State Police.

Based on a spectacular true story, this German film fittingly arrives on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and is a thrilling example of one of thousands of real-life escape attempts from East Germany in the 1960s and 70s – and the lengths that people are willing to go to for freedom.