Overview

• Arthur Franck’s Der Helsinki-Effekt compiles archival footage and newly declassified meeting protocols to recreate the CSCE negotiations held over 672 days in 1975.
• AI voice simulations of Leonid Brezhnev and Henry Kissinger bring fresh insight into the diplomats’ private exchanges during the Finlandia Hall talks.
• The film highlights the three “baskets” of the Helsinki Accords—security, economic cooperation and human rights—and the compromise between border recognition and civil liberties.
• It shows how human rights provisions inspired Helsinki advocacy groups, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia and Poland’s Solidarity movement, contributing to the Soviet bloc’s eventual unraveling.
• Franck frames the documentary as a timely reminder of the power of patient negotiation in an era of dwindling neutral mediators and renewed great-power rivalry.