The Legend of Rita

Rita Vogt writes a letter to her friend Tatjana, recounting the life she has lived as a fugitive. The framing establishes a retrospective, memory-driven narrative that will follow. It sets the tone for a personal, confessional portrait of her choices and their consequences.

In the 1970s, Rita and her fellow RAF members engage in armed robberies, kidnappings, and other attacks across West Germany as part of their campaign against the capitalist system. The group uses violence to challenge the state and draw attention to their cause. The period establishes the militants' notoriety and danger.

During a visit to Paris, Rita is asked for her license by a local police officer. When he closes in, she flees and the officer pursues her into a parking ramp, where she fatally shoots him. The incident marks a brutal escalation in her flight and the RAF's activities.

Following a prison break that involves the murder of a West Berlin corrections officer, Rita and her comrades flee through the Friedrichstraße train station into East Berlin. The East German government is reluctant to help due to anti-terrorism conventions, though the Stasi's higher-ups disagree. Agent Hull is tasked with assisting them unofficially and quietly.

Mielke, the chief of the Stasi, expresses sympathy for the RAF's attacks and orders Hull to help them, albeit unofficially. He signals a willingness to bend the law to support their escape and survival. The dynamic shifts East German security policy toward covert complicity.

Hull arranges a safe house and secretly trains the fugitives in the use of military hardware, expanding their capabilities while keeping the operation under wraps. Rita watches the training of her fellow militants with a sense of horror and detachment. The scene underscores the duality of the Stasi's support for the RAF's causes and the moral cost.

That evening, Hull explains that those who wish to retire from armed struggle can be given new identities, and two women—Friederike Adebach and Rita—accept the offer. The decision shocks the male members of the group and signals a shift toward life within the GDR's apparatus. The plan to 'legitimize' their existence begins to transform their identities.

Hull coaches Rita on her new 'legend' and she is given a menial job at a Volkseigener Betrieb clothing factory, where she poses as a West German who emigrated across the wall. Rita participates in the East German system's routines while maintaining a secret past. Her coworkers reveal the supposed 'solidarity' collections are ultimately siphoned into the East German coffers, a realization that isolates her further.

Rita's donations to the Sandinistas, taken at face value, solidify her status as a loyal comrade in the eyes of some but become a source of scorn from others who know the scam. Colleagues ostracize her for naivety and perceived cynicism, deepening her isolation. The scene underscores the moral compromises of living a lie in a surveillance state.

Only her depressed and alcoholic coworker Tatjana befriends Rita, and a deep bond forms, including a lesbian relationship. The two women's relationship becomes Rita's emotional anchor amid the lie of her identity. Tatjana's companionship provides a fragile refuge from the regime's pressures.

On a vacation to the Baltic Sea, she falls in love with Jochen Pettka. She becomes pregnant and Jochen asks her to marry him and travel to the Soviet Union. Hull tells her that such a move would risk exposing the RAF's ties and urges abortion.

During a choral performance, Rita notices Friederike Adebach in the audience; Friederike is now married with a child and endures the same repression. The encounter marks a bitter reunion and underscores the generation's shared disillusionment under the regime. The two women's paths cross again, amplifying the film's sense of entangled pasts.

Rita reveals her past to Jochen, deeply sickening him and causing him to sever ties with her. The revelation wrecks the fragile personal life she had hoped to build. The moment underscores the impossibility of fully escaping her former identity.

In 1989, East Germany collapses and consumer goods flood in, shocking Rita and prompting her sermons about what the people will never have again. The Stasi is disbanded and its weapons are confiscated, signaling a fundamental political overhaul. The rupture of the regime upends Rita's carefully constructed life.

Tatjana is released after years of imprisonment and runs to Rita's flat, only to be seized by plainclothes Vopos who ask, 'Are you Rita Vogt?' Rita tries to flee toward Poland on a motorbike, but at the border checkpoint a Vopo shoots her, killing her as she falls. The ending voiceover sums up the events with a stark, resigned truth.