Now, about the 99 Red Balloons, a friend gave me a movie called "The Red Balloon" recently. It is a short French film about a boy who was "adopted" by a balloon. I wonder if the two things are related.
The song is not connected to the movie.
Before the group became famous, Nena went to a concert in their homeland of West Berlin, to see the Rolling Stones. At one point in the show, helium balloons were released. Nena member Carlo Karges imagined the balloons going over the Berlin wall into East Germany, and being picked up on radar, and mistaken as an attack, and the result is World War III.
The original German "99 Luftballons" translates to English as 99 Balloons. The record company hired someone to write a "poetic English" version of the song, and the title became "99 Red Balloons".