April 1945. Born in Cologne, Gregor was raised in Moscow. Returning to Germany as an officer and interpreter for the Red Army during the final days of World War II, Gregor—only nineteen years old—calls on Nazi soldiers still in Brandenburg to surrender, and accept Hitler’s defeat.

Konrad Wolf looked back at his personal journals for this tremendous film, an impressive reckoning with the pitiful ends of war. With subtlety, empathy, and starkest realism, I Was Nineteen illuminates how a homeland now synonymous with “Goethe and Auschwitz” hangs heavy over the heads of the young.