Based on Christa Wolf's internationally acclaimed novel and criticized in East Germany for questioning the construction of the Wall, Divided Heaven was made during a brief cultural thaw in the early 1960s. The film, out for the first time on DVD today, was strongly influenced by French New Wave cinema. On his blog critic Sean Axmaker writes "it is as critical and disillusioned about the reality of the petty bureaucratic squabbles and political philosophical currents of East Germany in the fifties and sixties as it is about the so-called paradise of the west, as remarkable a portrait of East Germany as you’ll see and a heartfelt requiem for the divided Germany."