Siegel’s ambitious recent film is a search for a lost country, the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), that reveals the lingering ghosts of the past to be still very much in the minds of both the older and younger generations living in the now unified nation. A series of revealing - and also deliberately theatricalized - interviews with former DDR citizens are skillfully set against Siegel’s exploration of the Stasi - the East German secret police - headquarters and, most incredibly, the secret police archive of surveillance and training films. Once again questioning the fundamental human and cultural need to observe others, DDR/DDR expands upon Siegel’s intertwined interests in psychoanalysis and architecture, drawing a valuable yet wonderfully open-ended history lesson from the calculated designs of the past. Siegel’s most stylish and formally sophisticated film, DDR/DDR evokes Godard and Akerman in its meditatively lyrical camera movement and use of voiceover commentary.