Helmut Käutner was one of the most distinguished and influential filmmakers of the post-World War II era; a director and writer, he also founded a studio that was essential to the reconstruction of the film industry after the war. In Sky without Stars, Käutner took on a controversial and urgent topic: the political division of Germany. The film is a tragic love story between a West German border guard and a factory worker from the East; the pair can only meet in the ruins of a train station in no man's land. Käutner makes a stirring moral plea against the division of the country, without taking part in the Cold War polemics that usually dominated discussions of this painful subject. Although the film had little commercial success, Sky without Stars was enthusiastically received by critics and was honored with several national and international awards.