The Berlin Wall in film

The Berlin Wall had not yet been built when Austrian-born Hollywood filmmaker Billy Wilder began shooting "One, Two, Three" in the city in June 1961. Construction began while the film was being shot, with Wilder and his team later integrating the event into the plot. It turned the comedy into a famous document of film history.

After the construction of the Wall, the Cold War theme became a stock topic in western cinema. John Le Carré's famous spy novel "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold," published in 1963, was turned into a film two years later by Hollywood director Martin Ritt. Starring Richard Burton, the British production was filmed in the UK, the Netherlands and at Checkpoint Charlie.

Another British production came out just one year later: the 1966 espionage movie "Funeral in Berlin" by James Bond director Guy Hamilton. Michael Caine was the lead star in the film, with a host of German actors completing the ensemble. It was shot at several locations in West Berlin, and at Checkpoint Charlie. The scenes at Glienicke Bridge had to be shot at Swinemünder Bridge in the West.

Some years passed before James Bond himself was to come to Checkpoint Charlie and other well-known Berlin locations. Britain's most famous secret agent finally got "his" Berlin Wall film, "Octopussy," in 1983. At that time, Bond actor Roger Moore couldn't have guessed that the Wall would fall before the end of the decade.

Not surprisingly, Berlin became the setting of many films about the Cold War after the fall of the Wall. Based on Ian McEwan's novel, British director John Schlesinger shot in 1993 the drama "The Innocent," starring Anthony Hopkins, Isabella Rossellini and Campbell Scott. The story takes place in November 1989 and in the 1950s. Despite its famous cast, the film did not impress critics.

After the fall of the Wall, German cinema dealt with the subject in a surprising way: through comedy. In 1999, theater director Leander Haussmann brought his film "Sonnenallee" (Sun Avenue) to the cinemas. Together with author Thomas Brussig and actor Detlev Buck (pictured), he told the story of a few young people living in the eastern part of Berlin in 1973.

Perhaps not as famous, but just as entertaining and humorously sensitive, the Berlin Wall comedy titled "Helden wie wir" (Heroes Like Us) is also based on a novel by Thomas Brussig. The film exposing the absurdities of everyday life in former East Germany was released on the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In the following years, numerous TV and cinema films also dealt with the adventurous escape attempts of East German citizens. One of the most spectacular was Roland Suso Richter's "The Tunnel" in 2001. Based on true events, it tells the story of an escape through a tunnel under the Berlin Wall. In 1962, 29 people fled this way.

In 2003, another comedy about East German history and the fall of the Wall became one of the biggest international hits of German cinema. In "Good Bye, Lenin!" director Wolfgang Becker had his hero, young actor Daniel Brühl, elaborately try to maintain the illusion that communism didn't collapse, as he aimed to protect his mother, who was in a coma when the Berlin Wall came down, from the shock.

As little remained of the original Berlin Wall, directors who later addressed the topic either filmed at the few locations where parts of the Wall still stood or built replicas in studios. Peter Timm, who was born in East Berlin in 1950, shot several films about the Wall and the East-West divide, including "Meier," "Go Trabi Go" and in 2009, "Liebe Mauer" (Beloved Berlin Wall, pictured here).

In 2015, Hollywood once again took a look at the Cold War era. Star director Steven Spielberg (left) staged his movie "Bridge of Spies," starring Tom Hanks (right) in Berlin. The historical drama depicts a famous case of secret agents being exchanged on the Glienicke Bridge. The film was shot at original locations and in Babelsberg Studios.