DEFA does not generally evoke notions of avant-garde film art— not just for dismissive Western critics and audiences after German unification but equally among GDR artists and viewers. Director Herwig Kipping, himself trained in Babelsberg, had already clearly stated this in his diploma thesis, Poesie und Film, in 1982:

Kipping and his generation of DEFA directors, sometimes referred to as the fourth (and last) generation or Nachwuchsgeneration tried to heed this call for a new aesthetic. the 1988 manifesto for the fifth congress of film and television workers (Verband für Film und Fernsehschaffende, VFF) that had requested more freedom and experimentation for younger film artists in the DEFA studio only expressed collectively for the last generation what slightly older directors such as Ulrich Weiß had struggled for in their individual careers. Rather than fulfilling genre expectations, Weiß developed a visual language that created visceral cinematic experiences, through evocative visuals, exacting camera work, and unusual soundtracks instead of didactic dialogue and explanatory voice-overs. His superiors considered the resulting interpretive ambiguity as aesthetically too open and thus politically diffuse.