Winter Adieu is Helke Misselwitz's "journey of discovery" through the GDR, exploring the lives and aspirations of women of all ages, from an 85-year-old dance instructor to teenage punkettes. That the socialist state has not brought true liberation for women is a given; the film's poetry derives from the intimacy Misselwitz attained with her subjects, who reveal with compelling honesty their injured expectations and still-vital dreams. A case in point is Margarete Busse, celebrated matriarch of a family whose pride is its zero divorce rate; in the privacy of her own bedroom, Margarete articulates the pain she feels in her marriage. Two teenagers whose creative streaks run counter to the system entertain us with punk wisdom until they are sent off to disciplinary schools. The disappointment of a 37-year-old coal worker who feels ostracized because of her mentally retarded daughter is a gentle counterpoint to the enthusiasm of a publically active children's-home director who, after a severe illness, resolves to live her private life more intensely. Cinematographer Thomas Plenert and editor and co-writer Gudrun Plenert have given the film a kinetic rhythm which critic Barton Byg notes "creates in us the physical sensation of desiring to see more...Off-screen space is evoked to remind us that there is always more than meets the eye..." Village Voice critic J. Hoberman, writing on the Berlin Film Festival '89, called Winter Adieu a "beautifully crafted, highly committed (example of) glasnost docs (which) proved stranger than fiction."