The Leap 1961

(2021)

On 15 August 1961 the nineteen-year-old East German border policeman Conrad Schumann leaped over a barbed-wire barrier into the West section of Berlin. This moment was captured by the photographer Peter Leibing. According to Time magazine, the photo of the fleeing policeman is an icon of the 20th century and counts among the 100 photographs that have changed the world. 60 years after the Berlin Wall went up, film director Boris Hars-Tschachotin tells the story of the genesis of the iconic shot from three different filmic perspectives.