Marcin Wierzchowski

In the run-up to parliamentary elections in mid-October, Polish filmmaker Marcin Wierzchowski travelled across his country to gauge the atmosphere in a society that is more divided than ever.

The murderer came from the neighborhood: On February 19, 2020, an assassin shot and killed nine young people for racist motives in Hanau. Survivors and relatives report how they experienced the night of the crime and the months after it and how they defend themselves against the logic of the perpetrator who wanted to make them strangers in their own homeland. Since that February night, they have been fighting for the memory of the victims and for clarifying what happened. And they ask many pressing questions about the night of the crime and the perpetrator that no one has wanted to answer so far. The documentary consistently looks at the crime from the perspective of the bereaved and uses their stories to tell about troublesome life of a citizen of foreign descent in Germany today, about inequality and about the everyday racism of the authorities and educational institutions.

The film tells the story of the victims’ relatives and the survivors of the racist attack in Hanau in 2020, in which nine young people were murdered because the perpetrator did not consider them to be German.

The racist murder attack in Hanau has made the question of who actually belongs to this society an existential issue for a group of young adults.