Erhard Dhein

The gentle inhabitants of a quaint Berlin apartment house, damaged by the Second World War but possessing an elegance of its own, love the place where they live, with its motto Liebe das Leben-Lebe das Lieben (Love Living, Live Loving) emblazoned above the door. Their love for it only increases when they learn that it is threatened by a bank redevelopment project. Among the apartment-dwellers are an elderly couple (Brigitte Mira and Erhardt Dhein) who have toured the world together.

This feature film describes the labor dispute of a piecework crew in a large German industrial company and its workforce against the background of the "September strikes" in Germany.

The unemployed machinist Alfred "Scheff" Schefczyk moves from Württemberg to West Berlin full of hope, where he finds a job as a transporter. There, however, he despairs at the seemingly insurmountable dependency structures and the lack of solidarity among his fellow sufferers. The rent in the workers' hostel is raised disproportionately, but nobody wants to mess things up with the landlord or janitor. At work, piecework hours are tightened, but nobody wants to go on strike, and when they do, they are quickly crushed by the management's tactics. When Scheff tries to mobilize against the dismissal of one of the delegates, he finds only one worker willing to sign. "Dear mother, I'm fine," he nevertheless writes on a postcard.

The movie "L'instant de la paix" consists of three segments: 1. "Les rideaux blancs" (France) 2. "Berlin N 65" (West Germany) 3. "Matura" (Poland)