Film screening The People vs Fritz Bauer (Der Staat gegen Fritz Bauer)

Lars Kraume / Germany 2015 / 1h45min / German with English subtitles
Cast: Burghart Klaussner, Ronald Zehrfeld, Sebastian Blomberg, Jörg Schüttauf, Lilith Stangenberg

Germany, 1957. Attorney General Fritz Bauer receives crucial evidence on the whereabouts of SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann. The lieutenant colonel, responsible for the mass deportation of the Jews, is allegedly hiding in Buenos Aires. Bauer, himself Jewish, has been trying to take Nazi crimes to court ever since his return from Danish exile. However, there has been no success so far due to the fierce German determination to repress its sinister past. Because of his distrust in the German justice system, Fritz Bauer contacts the Israeli secret service Mossad, and, by doing so, commits treason. Influential people would like to see Fritz Bauer finally rendered “harmless”. Denunciations, which even spill over into his private life, aspiring to establish his homosexuality and therefore a breach of Paragraph 175, threaten to wear him and his colleagues down. Lars Kraume’s political thriller draws from elements of melodrama, both to create an image of a German hero in the years following World War II, and to enrich and expand the character with facets that fictionalize him as an assailable individual.
 

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