“Crime Scene” today from Stuttgart: This is what “delusion” is like

Nine Reich citizens from the Prinz Reuss group have been on trial in Stuttgart-Stammheim since April – where the trial against the RAF terrorists of the Baader-Meinhof group once took place. The screenplay duo Katharina Adler and Rudi Gaul – the latter also directed – have now created, in their third Stuttgart “crime scene”, a Huis-Clos thriller based on this mixed situation and the intellectual kinship between the ultra-right and the ultra-left, which takes place in a Stuttgart cinema.

The state government has invited people to the premiere of a documentary film with the telling title “Who We Are: The Zero Hour of Our Democracy”. The guests include the police chief, a state secretary, a right-wing populist cadre politician and a well-known journalist.

Rather by chance, Chief Inspector Bootz (Felix Klare) is also there. But in the middle of the sentence “This is the birth certificate of the Bundestag,” the film screening stops and an overexcited young woman (convincing: Anna Schimrigk) and an equally excited man take control of the hall at gunpoint.

The terrorists demand the release of two “political prisoners” – criminals who see themselves in the “national resistance” – and the confession of the Interior Minister of Baden-Württemberg that he had members of the resistance group murdered in prison. Otherwise one hostage after another would be shot down. There’s already one dead person.

Unlike in the journalistic thriller “September 5”, here we follow via split screen how the Interior Minister and police react to the hostage-taking outside, especially Bootz’s colleague Lannert (Richy Müller), and how almost a Ferdinand von Schirach drama is unfolding inside with votes on who will be shot next.

In “Verblendenung” Anna Schimrigk plays a fanatical perpetrator who, in view of the weaknesses of democracy and locust capitalism, has become addicted to a right-wing ideology. “We hold accountable those who are responsible for lies, deception, manipulation, and for holding us all hostage.” The globalists and everyone who took part in exploitation and “repopulation” are to blame.

She is willing to sacrifice herself, her colleagues and all the hostages, and is blind to the fact that she herself is being manipulated by her own group. The “bull” Bootz and the “media whore”, on the other hand, stand up for humanism and the value of every human life; They show moral strength where the other hostages give in.

There’s something very pedagogical about that. It was well researched and theoretically sound, but sometimes you can hear the paper box clattering when it comes to the state’s ability to blackmail or what democracy and freedom really mean.

The forensic doctor states: “In the past, people were left-wing with radical criticism of the system, today they are left-wing if they defend the system.” But despite some stilted announcements, certain inconsistencies and a staff that overall can’t develop much depth, the film remains exciting and even has a joke up its sleeve at the end.

Dear Alexandra is an editor in the life department, with a focus on theater and socio-political issues. Studied German and English in Konstanz, Oxford and Freiburg i Br.More info

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