The Cold Room

Carla Martin finishes the school year at a parochial boarding school and travels to East Berlin to live with her estranged father at an inn. The headmistress gives her a 1936 Berlin guide and warns that the city has changed as much as she has. She carries a mix of excitement and fear about rejoining her father and the unfamiliar city.

Hugh Martin welcomes Carla at the Berlin Airport, surprised by how grown she looks for a girl about to turn seventeen. He gifts her a teddy bear, which embarrasses Carla as they share a first-name familiarity. The reunion signals the start of a complicated summer in a divided city.

Carla and Hugh cross the border into East Berlin, with Carla fearful of being personally searched for drugs and the dangers of the hidden bag she carries. The moment underscores the city’s political divide and Carla's trepidation about what she is stepping into. They proceed with tense caution.

Hugh's girlfriend Lili appears in the scene and recommends Frau Hoffman's inn because of its local character. Carla senses that Hugh's world is complicated and wonders about where she will sleep and fit in. The choice of inn becomes the setting for the summer's strange dual reality.

Carla is convinced there is more behind the broom closet next to her room and fears a secret hiding place. Hugh tries to reassure her by showing that the space is harmless, smoothing over her fear but leaving the mystery intact. Her unease plants the seed for the room concealing something much darker.

Carla taps the wall behind the wardrobe and breaks through to a disused cold room where a Jewish dissident named Erich hides. She starts smuggling him food, utensils, and even her father's razor. The discovery pulls Carla into a dangerous, secret history that overlaps with her own life.

In visions, Carla becomes Christa Bruckner, a young daughter of a butcher in a 1936 Berlin world. Christa lives under Nazi pressure and a dangerous father figure, and her experiences echo the trauma that surrounds the inn's hidden history. The two realities begin to intertwine in Carla’s mind.

Christa endures harassment from her Nazi Party father, who calls her a slut and sexually assaults her during the night. She bears lines of cuts on her palms as signs of the violence she endures. Carla's sense of danger grows as she learns more about Christa's suffering.

Christa and Erich become lovers in the hidden room, trying to find a moment of safety within the danger outside. They carve their names into a cross on the wall, creating a stubborn symbol of their fragile bond. Christa frets about pregnancy and the future in a world that forbids hope.

Herr Bruckner pulls Christa back into the butcher shop, while Frau Hoffman orchestrates a scheme to reveal Erich to the Gestapo. The plan increases the danger for Erich and the hidden room, setting the stage for a violent confrontation that blurs east and west timelines.

Moltke waits in Carla's room and the violence from 1936 spills into the present: Erich shoots one of Moltke's men, and Moltke kills Erich. The line between past and present becomes dangerously thin, affecting Carla's grip on reality. The event jolts Carla into confronting the inn's secret history.

Coming to her senses after the confrontation, Carla accuses Frau Hoffman of Erich's death. Unable to tell Hugh from the threat, she stabs him in the chest with a hidden knife. Hugh survives, and Carla and Lili escape toward an ambulance with him.

The police are called to open the wall behind the wardrobe. The planks are removed, revealing the hidden room filled with rats and the carved names, exposing Erich and Christa's history as well as Frau Hoffman's involvement. The revelation shatters Carla's double vision of the past and present.

With the truth exposed, Hugh escorts Carla back toward the airport so she can return to live with her aunt. The summer ends with Carla leaving East Berlin, carrying the weight of what she learned and the memories of the two worlds she inhabited. The inn, the wall, and the past linger in her mind as she leaves.