THE BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX (DER BAADER MEINHOF KOMPLEX) (German)
The Story:
The film begins in 1967. Klaus Rainer Röhl, publisher of the radical magazine Konkret, his wife Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck) and his two small daughters spend their summer vacation in blissful nakedness on a nudist beach on the North Sea island of Sylt. On the front page of an illustrated magazine can be seen the picture of the Shah of Iran and his wife Farah Diba. Röhl explains to his daughters—against the protests of Meinhof—that the Shah tortures his opponents and cuts off their heads.
The anti-Shah demonstration of June 2. The Shah and his wife are arriving at the German Opera in Berlin. On the other side of the street—behind a dense police cordon—demonstrators wave banners and chant slogans. Between the police and the visiting Iranian monarch are his supporters—a group of well-trained brawny men in black suits—waving pro-Shah posters.
Suddenly, the Shah supporters cross the police line and begin to viciously beat up the peaceful demonstrators. A woman is bleeding. The police stand by, doing nothing. Finally, they pull out their truncheons and brutally drive apart the demonstrators. One sees the disbelieving, frightened and indignant faces. A shot rings out in a courtyard. The police officer Karl-Heinz Kurras has shot the student Benno Ohnesorg.
Now the events fast forward. In a Berlin apartment, the first bombs are being made. Rudi Dutschke addresses the Berlin congress against the Vietnam War and is shot down on the street. Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu) and Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek) set fire to a Frankfurt department store. They are arrested. Ulrike Meinhof takes part in their liberation. A person is seriously injured (accidentally) and the group submerges into the underground.
Trained by Fatah forces in Jordan in bank robberies and bombings, the arrested RAF members are kept in solitary confinement as a group in the high security wing of Stammheim prison. On television, radio and in secret messages, they follow how the second generation takes over the command and the terror escalates: cold-blooded attacks on prominent representatives of the state and big business, hostage-taking in the German embassy in Stockholm, and finally—in the "German autumn" of 1977—the abduction of Hans Martin Schleyer (Bernd Stegemann), president of the German Employers Association, as well as the hijacking of a Lufthansa plane by a Palestinian commando unit. The object of both actions is to secure the release of the prisoners in Stammheim.
Ulrike Meinhof is already dead by this time, found hanged in her prison cell. Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe are likewise found dead in their cells on the morning of October 18. Previously, a "special forces" operation had overwhelmed the hijackers in Somalia. The film ends with the execution of Schleyer, who is shot in the head.
Starring:
Martina Gedeck, Moritz Bleibtreu, Johanna Wokalek, Nadja Uhl, Jan Josef Liefers
Directed By:
Uli Edel
Release:
2008
Watch the Trailer
