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Follow Me

Follow Me is a 1989 East-West drama film directed by the Austrian filmmaker Maria Knilli. It was her second feature film, following her feature film debut with Lieber Karl released in 1984. Follow Me was entered as the official German contribution into the competition of the 16th Moscow International Film Festival in 1989 and had its world premiere there. It was released theatrically in German cinemas on 2 November 1989, one week before the fall of the Berlin Wall. 1990, following the Velvet Revolution, the film was shown at the 27th International Film Festival in Karlovy Vary.

Plot

Pavel Navrátil, who had been teaching philosophy at Prague university, loses his professorship after the Prague Spring. Henceforth he is restricted to working as a gravedigger in a cemetery and lecturing his students secretly. After three years he is tired of this double life and risks starting a new one. He does not do this secretly, instead he makes a theatrical departure from the Czechoslovak police-state. He invites his students to the funeral of a dead man whom he does not know himself and who gets a huge grave-stone with the inscription 'Hrdlicka'. He holds a final secret seminar in his flat which, naturally, is observed. He gives away his philosophy books. He says goodbye to his mother, who still thinks he has not grown up, and to his wife and son who he has already left long ago, And he wishes his ex-colleague and arch-enemy well, knowing that he will not forget him.