Bettina Dziggel: “I was born in 1960 in a small village in Saxony. To my surprise, when I was a university student, I fell in love with a woman who was a goalkeeper on my handball team. Luckily, she was gay and we had a brief affair that we kept secret.

Later came doubt, coming out, and fear of psychiatrists. To put an end to doubts and love openly, I founded a support group for homosexuals in 1982, and later another group, Lesbians in Church. I worked with these organizations until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Working on the film “Out in East Berlin” was a great opportunity for me to reflect on that grueling and often hopeless time in East Germany. But for us in the lesbian community, those ideas of change brought joy even if they often did not materialize. We always continued our work. On * September, 2013, together with 400 other people I participated in the flash mob kissing protest in front of the Russian Embassy in Berlin. We expressed our support of the Russian LGBT community and sent a message to Putin that things cannot continue this way. I am very happy to be coming to St. Petersburg soon where I will have an opportunity to watch the films presented at the festival and to immerse myself in its atmosphere. ”