Like frogs in a simmering cauldron, We The People stare dumbly into our smartphones as autocrats slowly turn up the heat. The Music Makers tells how the end result - dictatorship - smothered the lives of ordinary East Berliners not so long ago and how they struggled to wrest free of it.

The story unfolds as Greta, a high school civics teacher, known for her eccentricities, spots a man playing an old-fashioned barrel organ on a busy street. She becomes enthralled to see passersby pause and gather. Soon, they are waltzing on the street and singing old German songs – a refreshing respite from their grueling lives in a grim, gray city brooded over by the notorious Stasi police.

Before long, Greta has parlayed that moment of joy into Sunday afternoon gatherings of amateur musicians, singers and dancers in a plaza near the iconic Brandenburg Gate. All this happens as protests are erupting all over East Berlin against the despised rule of Communist East Germany and its Russian overlords. Soon, Stasi and KGB agents are paying special attention and some of the music makers find their past lives painfully exposed.

All these ingredients of life in a dictatorship ignite events that lead to the fall of the Berlin wall in November 1989. The music makers are bit players in the whole saga, but their story demonstrates how precious democracy and free speech are and how important it is for “ordinary people” to uphold it