This book provides a thorough overview of the ostalgie films about the German Democratic Republic (GDR) produced since the 1990s. Far from being a homogenous phenomenon that romanticizes the totalitarian state, the ostalgie genre is multifaceted, reflexive, and at times subversive. Thus, Astafeva argues, the core of "ostalgie" is an experience of distance that is ‘prefocused’ by various aesthetic strategies. This genre-based definition makes it possible to conceptualize the phenomenon of ostalgie film in its heterogeneity and to reveal the mechanisms that lay in the essence...