Countdown is an observational documentary filmed in Berlin and environs over the ten-day period leading up to the unification of the German currencies on July 1, 1990. Following a chronological structure, the film ends on the date marking the “first stage of German reunification.” Without commentary or other strategies to direct the viewer’s perspective on the action that unfolds before her camera eye, Ottinger captures a place (her home city) on the brink of transition, and a world that may now be divided along new lines. Seen thirty years on, Countdown is a rare document of Berlin and the conditions of life in the East and West at a critical moment.