Die Unberührbare

Die Unberührbare documents the final days of the writer Gisela Elsner, who took her life at the age of 56. As a young writer, her early success with her first novel makes her a « shooting star » of the literary scene in the 60s. But her inability to rise to the challenge of her own success leaves her entrapped in a conflict with the demands placed upon her. In touch with the events of the day, rebellious and extroverted, but in effect unpolitical, she finds her spiritual foundation in the DKP (German Communist Party), which celebrated both her and her work, most of all in the East Block. The course of her private life, its complicated and misunderstood relationships influenced by her earliest experiences, an assortment of disappointments, and heightened by an addiction to pills and alcohol, has led to an inner loneliness. In the last stage of her life portrayed in this film, she puts her hope in finding a new beginning in an old love. In this brief space of documented time, her past is recognized by way of various points of contact, and conflict, with people who carry varying degrees of weight. The film is set in the time immediately following the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. A time of beginning and ending, a time of hope and disappointment which also dictates daily life.