The German People
By Kit Macdonald
Das Deutsche Volk (The German People) is a stark and patient documentary that traces the aftermath of a racially motivated massacre in 2020 in which a far-right extremist shot dead 10 people and wounded five more in the city of Hanau, near Frankfurt. Rather than reconstructing (or rehashing) the crime itself, filmmaker Marcin Wierzchowski embeds with victims’ families over several years, allowing their grief, anger and resilience to unfold in real time.
Wierzchowski’s approach is intimate but political, and he frames mourning as a form of resistance. In insisting on memory, visibility and accountability, the film becomes less a memorial than a political action in the ongoing struggle for recognition within contemporary Germany. Part of the 29th DocsBarcelona documentary festival.