"Permits, please," visitors are told, as the gate cracks open to reveal a border post with another officer asking for identity papers -- all part of a live event featuring "Good Bye Lenin!", the popular 2003 film set in communist East Germany.
Organisers of the show have brought the defunct state to life in an old post office, and for seven nights at a hefty 30 euros ($33) per ticket, visitors can taste life in the grim authoritarian state before ending the evening with a screening of the film.
Along the corridors decorated with commemorative Communist Party congress metal plates and portraits of former East German leader Erich Honecker, Stasi guards whisper conspiratorially.
In a windowless room, a secretary is furiously typing documents, while a fake grocery store sells Eastern products like Bautz'ner mustard or toys featuring the cartoon character Sandman.
And at a restaurant run by East German train caterer Mitropa, the menu has features just three food options -- gherkins and two hearty dishes ubiquitous in the former eastern bloc -- solyanka, a thick Russian soup, and goulash.
They can be washed down with Club Cola -- the former German Democratic Republic's answer to Coke -- or a luminescent green Gruene Wiese cocktail or Pfeffi schnapps, a pungent peppermint concoction.
There are also rules to be observed in the 2,000 square metres (21,000 square feet) recreating the former police state -- film-goers have to turn up in clothes in keeping with East German fashion and no photography is allowed.
"It's always great to hear people saying that when they watch a film in the cinema, they feel like they have been transported to another world," event organiser Christopher Zwickler told AFP.
"So we thought, how can we take this one step further, so that you have a live cinema experience where the viewer also becomes a leading actor that evening."
