M
German Film Forum

Germany | 1931 | 111’
In German
Director: Fritz Lang

Berlin, 1931. A city gripped by fear: a child murderer is at large, and the police are closing in — but so is the criminal underworld, whose trade is disrupted by the relentless manhunt. When Hans Beckert is finally cornered, he faces not a court of law but a kangaroo trial in a basement, forced to plead for his life before the very men society has condemned.  Fritz Lang's debut sound film remains a masterwork of moral complexity. Drawing on the real-life case of Peter Kürten, Lang wields silence, shadow and Edvard Grieg's haunting leitmotif to ask an unsettling question: who has the right to judge?