„The state against Fritz Bauer“ – film & discussion

The film THE STATE AGAINST FRITZ BAUER will be shown at the endstationKino from Thursday, 28 October 2015. The film shows how the Hessian Attorney General Fritz Bauer fights in the mid-1950s to ensure that those responsible for the crimes of the Nazi regime are held legally accountable. His opponents are Nazis who were banned from the party in 1945.

They are back in power in the Adenauer Republic. The film won the coveted Audience Award at this year’s Locarno Film Festival. Most of the reviews are extremely positive. Jungle World, TAZ, FAZ and ZEIT, for example, recommend the film. The Süddeutsche Zeitung characterises it as an exciting political thriller. The film is not a documentary. It is more in the crime scene format. For some critics, e.g. in the Frankfurter Rundschau or the Ossietzky, the „sex and crime“ method overshadows the content of an appreciation of Fritz Bauer.

The historian Irmtrud Wojak has been researching the work of Fitz Bauer for many years and has completed her habilitation with a biography of him. She will be available for a film discussion on Sunday evening after the film, which starts at 7.00 pm. She will contrast the film character in the political thriller with the historical person and explore the question of how far a „game“ film can stray from the historical facts. When does the portrayal of a film hero become a fake?