Das Tor zur Hölle

What it is about

Das Tor zur Hölle opens a window onto an almost forgotten story. Twelve kilometres beneath the earth, science ends – and a legend begins. In 1983, East German mineralogist Anke Vogel and her husband Jost are sent to the Soviet superdeep drilling project on the Kola Peninsula.

While Jost works at the technical limits of the project, Anke receives a secret assignment. Years later, a tape surfaces that allegedly contains human screams from the depths. In the autumn of 1989, the East German state security service forces Anke to remember Kola: a devastating drilling accident, a missing geophysicist, Western intelligence services – and the question of what was actually recorded there.

Sometimes the decisive question is not whether a story is true, but whether the world is ready to believe it.