Adapted from Jhumpa Lahiri's best-selling novel, The Namesake succeeds as an aesthetically rich and emotionally gripping tale following the immigration of a Bengali couple to New York City and then on to an obscure suburb where they raise their two children.

A fiercely intelligent and engaging story tracing East Berlin dramatist Georg Dreyman's rebellion against the Deutsche Deomokratische Republik (DDR) and how this ripples out, The Lives of Others is a cinematic triumph for first time director/writer Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.