I watched a great DVD at the weekend – The Lives of Others. It’s a German film, and is all about how the East German secretpolice – the Stasi – spied on lots of people during the time that East Germany was still under communist rule. The film follows a team of secret service people spying on a established writer and playwright, and shows how the service were pretty determined to dig up dirt on people often when there wasn’t really any dirt there.

It has tragic outcomes for nearly everyone involved. It’s quite a long film, at more than 2 hours, and it’s obviously all in German, but it doesn’t feel like a long watch, and I enjoyed it. Above all it made me feel lucky that I grew up in somewhere in Scotland where people are free to do what they want. It’s not really a thriller, more of a suspense film, so if that’s your kind of thing I’d recommend you watch it.

You can check out the trailer here.