Wundkanal
Thomas Harlan, DE/FR 1984Screenplay: Yvette Bíró, Thomas Harlan; Cinematography: Henri Alekan; Editing: Patricia Mazuy, Schéhérazad Saadi; Cast: Alfred Filbert, Robert Kramer, Heike Geschonneck, Rolf Niffuag; Voices: Libgart Schwarz, Peter Fitz, Wieland Kiel, Margit Broich. DCP (from 35mm), color, 107 min. German/English with German subtitles
A group of armed militants capture a Nazi criminal and force him to face up to what he has done. They "help" him do so by interrogating him and confronting him with his deeds – keeping at it until he is ready to stammer out some sort of confession. All this is followed by a suicide or a murder; a violent end in any case. This bête noire of West German cinema and a key work of political filmmaking is at once vexing, aestheticized, genuinely disturbing and akin to a reckless frontal attack in its drive to condense as many things as possible into a borderline paranoid mix: the Red Army Faction and Nazis, Stammheim and concentration camps, false suicides and the real mass murder of millions. Convicted Nazi criminal Dr Alfred Filbert, a former Obersturmbannführer and at one time deputy head of the Sicherheitsdienst's foreign intelligence service, appears in the starring role. (O.M.)
Courtesy Filmmuseum München
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