The Silent Star (Der schweigende stern) When a mysterious object
from space is discovered in the Gobi Desert, an expedition is
dispatched to Venus to decipher the message it contains. What
they discover is a declaration of war on Earth. The first
science fiction film to be made in East Germany, The Silent Star
features special effects by Ernst Kunstmann, who worked on the
visual effects for Fritz Lang's seminal Metropolis (1927). Based
on the novel The Astronauts by Stanislaw Lem (who also penned
Solaris), The Silent Star is set in the era of the great space
race and warns of the dangers of nuclear warfare.