A murderous decision
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | A murderous decision |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2013 |
| length | 90 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Raymond Ley |
| script |
Hannah Ley Raymond Ley |
| production | ARTE, CineCentrum Deutsche Gesellschaft für Film- und Fernsehproduktion mbH, Kasbah-Film Tanger |
| music | Hans Peter Ströer |
| camera | Philipp Kirsamer |
| cut | Heike Parplies |
| occupation | |
Also: Jürgen Uter , Stephan Grossmann , Achim Buch , Boubker Fahmie, Abdeslam Bouheimi, Karim Chadli, Addad Mohamed, Abbass Kamal, Yassine Benhamida | |
A murderous decision is a German television - docudrama from 2013, directed by Raymond Ley . Ley also wrote the script for the film with his wife Hannah . The air raid near Kunduz , which killed more than a hundred people, is discussed.
action
- April 2009 - Five months before the tank trucks were bombed
Colonel Georg Klein takes up his duties. Little is known about him, no children, loves classical music. He was informed of the current situation and that the insurgents in the area where the German battalion was deployed were extremely mobile. A Taliban leader announced through the microphones held out to him that their goal was to shoot down the German soldiers and rid the country of them. One of the young soldiers, who, like Klein, have just arrived, hears one of the men who have been on duty for a long time saying: "We are showing our presence, they should see that we are present here street by street." At the same time, they organize Taliban in the surrounding villages. During their first mission, the young soldiers find themselves in a precarious situation on patrol , but thanks to an informant belonging to the Taliban they can retreat in good time.
The Taliban have recruited an adolescent as a suicide bomber . When his desperate father tries to prevent his son from sacrificing himself, he is mistreated and instructed that the boy has volunteered. Another father said that the Taliban would knock on their doors at night and ask their sons out. A little later, the recruited adolescent drives a car down the street. Tears run down his young face, his hand trembles on the bomb to be detonated, which means his death. Then the car blows up, apart from the young person, there are no human casualties to complain about this time, five German soldiers are slightly injured.
During another patrol, Sergej Motz swaps places with a comrade and is in an exposed position directly behind the machine gun on the tank. All of a sudden the armored column was shot at from all sides by the enemy. The soldiers fire back, the machine gun on the tank on which Motz is standing is jammed. One tries to hand him another weapon when a shot hits him in the neck. The bleeding cannot be stopped, his comrades in despair. “Wake up, wake up, you can't do that,” one of them shouts desperately.
When Colonel Klein later speaks to the young soldiers, he declares that the value of a life is at the top of his agenda. Not knowing what to do next, he then stutters "... I'm sorry, I'm sorry". In a conversation with the military chaplain Wolfram Schmidt, he looks for a justification. Schmidt replies that he could not acquit him, only God could. A few days later, Klein went to the soldiers to tell them that some rules had been adapted to the actual circumstances and the situation on site, and then sums it up in the words: “You can also simply say it when the situation so requires, then they shoot and not just on the legs. "
Shortly afterwards the situation escalates again. When a car does not stop despite repeated calls, a soldier shoots. “My son, my son,” you hear a voice calling and the image of a young man hit is faded in.
In a one-on-one conversation, BND employee Henry Diepholz Klein communicates that the Inspector General of the Bundeswehr, General Wolfgang Schneiderhan , is pushing for demonstrable success. There will be no record of what is being said here now. Shortly afterwards, the brother of the governor of Kunduz is killed, which leads to a serious crisis of confidence between him and the German commanders in the command center.
- 3rd / 4th September 2009 - Air raid near Kunduz
On September 3, 2009, the Taliban appropriated two tank trucks with 58,000 liters of gasoline. One driver is killed, the other brutally mistreated when he tries to rebel. The hijacked tankers get stuck in the Kunduz River . The river is about 7 km as the crow flies from the Bundeswehr camp. The Taliban are forcing the farmers to provide tractors to haul the trucks out of the river. With the oil in the tank, however, they are too heavy for the population to be told they can pick up oil, which is what many people do. Around 11 a.m. that day, the soldiers were ambushed and three of them were injured.
On September 4, 2009, the informant reported again to Oliver Nordhausen, an intelligence officer of Task Force 47 , with whom he was in contact, and reported that the entire Taliban leadership would be in the area of the captured tanker trucks. It is known that this informant receives some of his information again from a sub-informant. Again it is confirmed that only members of the Taliban are in the area, there are no innocents there. In reality, many adults from the surrounding villages and children went there.
What should happen now is up to Colonel Klein. The soldiers receive the message that they should prepare for 50 to 70 insurgents at the destination. Reliable information was available that all the people acting there are insurgents. When the informant, who is helping older people in the area with carrying the fuel, tries to go back to the sandbar, he receives a warning not to go back to the river.
“We are running out of time,” says Klein and Diepholz replies that this is the typical dilemma . Finally, there are clear indications that the Taliban are planning an attack on the German camp. It is also he who repeatedly affects Klein on his behalf. Klein doesn't make the decision easy. When the news comes that the American bomber pilots called for support are proposing to fly their planes lower in order to drive the people apart and only then to blow up the tanker trucks, the Colonel firmly refuses. Previously, they had repeatedly expressed doubts that there was an acute danger situation. The mood is nervous and tense. Klein's decision is based on his assumption that the Taliban are planning to remove the oil from the tanker trucks in order to later blow up the camp near Kunduz with it, which means imminent danger. He issues the order: “Prepare for the attack, exclude everything else. We're still a minute away. One minute until the bombs are triggered. "
Shortly after the dropping, the informant reports again and states that there must have been around 70 Taliban dead, including two of the four most wanted leaders. Rahmann and another leader had escaped.
background
In addition to excerpts showing the accused before the investigative committee, victims of Klein's decision also have their say in the film. For example, Djanat Gul, who lost his brother, who was also his best friend, in the fire inferno, reports that the Taliban have their own state within the state. They would act arbitrarily as they please, be brutal and ruthless, and have their own laws. That would not only affect the enemy, but also its own population, some of whom they would even use as a protective shield in the event of armed attacks. International agreements and agreements are completely indifferent to them. Another Afghan says that on that fateful day the Taliban came, turned their Kalashnikovs on the people and asked them to hand over tractors to move the stuck tankers. They had to be given the equipment, "otherwise they would have shot us all," he ends. More Afghans report losing loved ones, including many children. Nuria Gulbaschra, for example, lost her son and two grandchildren, while Abdul Ghafar lost three of his brothers. Mohammad Omer, commander of the Kunduz province, said that the German soldiers had not demonstrated the necessary assertiveness in the past, which meant that the Taliban were able to spread further and further in the province.
Galina and Victor Motz, the parents of the killed young soldier Sergej Motz, also have their say. Sergei's mother said that she could no longer sleep properly, that her son would continue to live for her, that she would often talk to him. Sergej wanted a big family and wanted to get married after his assignment in Afghanistan. At that time she asked several times if it was really her son who was dead, hoped, maybe a mistake, but no ... unfortunately! Victor Motz says that he told his son that he must be able to trust his friends, if they did not protect each other, they would be lost. He blames himself because it was he who told Sergei: “Go!” In this respect, he feels guilty.
Colonel Georg Klein testified before the investigative committee: “I am against the assertion made in the media that I wanted to kill.” He also says: We knew that from March 2009 onwards, difficult times would lie ahead. When asked whether he had been pressured into making his decision, Klein ponders for a while. An aircraft officer testifies and speaks of imminent danger. Klein says it was inconceivable for him that there were children running around at midnight in the area ruled by the Taliban. (Note in the film: It was Ramadan , people hadn't done anything during the day, which also explains why children were there at that time). Klein frankly admits that he gave the order and made this decision, according to his assessment at the time, this assignment was correct and therefore proportionate. He had moved in the border area, it had happened, the bombs had been dropped.
The BND employee Henry Diepholz, who was introduced to the feature film store by Ley and played by Axel Milberg, is not guaranteed according to the files. The plot in the film also aims covertly at the Afghan allies influencing Klein to make such a decision.
There are different figures about the number of victims (mostly civilians), ranging from 91 to 142 and more. There was an investigation by the Federal Prosecutor's Office with suspected war crimes. The proceedings were discontinued in April 2010. In 2013, Klein was promoted to Brigadier General.
Franz Josef Jung , who was Federal Minister of Defense at Kunduz at the time of the attack , resigned his post as Federal Minister of Labor , which he had assumed shortly before, after just 33 days. Wolfgang Schneiderhan , General Inspector of the Bundeswehr , and State Secretary Peter Wichert were dismissed from their offices by Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg .
Production notes
The shooting time for the docu-drama lasted from April 21 to July 5, 2012 (documentary shoot) and from May 29 to June 23, 2012 (scenic shoot). The film was shot in Morocco , Kunduz , Hamburg and the state of Lower Saxony . The film was funded by Nordmedia and the Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein Film Fund .
The television film was first broadcast on August 30, 2013 on Arte . After the docudrama on September 4, 2013. prime time in the first was broadcasted, ran after a discussion about the film and its subject matter at Anne Will , where they discussed the impact on future operations.
Although soldiers and senior officers wanted to speak in front of the camera, the Bundeswehr did not issue a permit, reported the film's producer, Ulrich Lenze, in an interview. They also did not agree to contribute film documents from the Bundeswehr archive, which was justified by the fact that a feature film that was mixed with real scenes could not ensure that the audience would be able to distinguish between real and fiction.
DVD
A murderous decision - the air raid near Kunduz was released on September 27, 2013 by Studio Hamburg Enterprises (AL! VE) on DVD (also as Blu-ray).
criticism
The film-dienst wrote about A Murderous Decision : “The docu-fiction discusses both legal and moral questions and combines memos, witness statements and expert opinions with the fictional elaboration of the emotional worlds of those involved in a considerable research work. Carried by an excellent ensemble of actors, a disturbing chronology of the momentous mission succeeds. "
In the Frankfurter Rundschau , Steffen Hebestreit writes that the docudrama is developing “[s] a tremendous force”, “because it eschews anything striking”. The “great Matthias Brandt” portrays Colonel Klein “not as a sadistic, unscrupulous killer, but as a strangely distant, almost uninvolved doubter” and as a “desk perpetrator who dealt with the situation in Kunduz, the Bundeswehr's hottest hot spot at the time was overwhelmed ".
TV Spielfilm gave the best possible rating (thumbs up) and wrote: “Raymond Ley (“ The Children of Blankenese ”) succeeded in a clever work-up.” Overall, TV Spielfilm drew the conclusion: “A gripping protocol of a tragedy”.
Niels Kruse from Stern.de spoke of a “gripping ARD docudrama” that “did not answer” the question of “how much guilt Colonel Georg Klein had incurred”. Kruse complained that "the creators had found a seemingly unmanageable mass of witnesses, most of whom looked painfully into the camera and reported about their relatives who had been killed". But Kruse also found that this was "the only flaw in the well-made and very moving war film".
Klaudia Wick from tittelbach.tv rated Matthias Brandt's performance as “strong”. He played the colonel "very convincingly and unpretentiously as the mouse-gray citizen in uniform who gets everything wrong at the crucial moment because he absolutely wants to do everything right". The achievements of Matthias Koeberlin and Franz Dinda are also highlighted with the words that they "would give the soldiers of Task Force 47 their hunger for success". "The multi-perspective docudrama suddenly turns into an oppressively believable bunker drama in which time constraints and the pressure to make decisions determine the actions of all those involved."
The television magazine Hörzu awarded the film one of three points for action, tension and feeling, and two for claim, and came to the overall rating “Success”. The scenic reconstruction of the Kunduz tragedy "offers a realistic representation of the events without sweeping judgments".
The television magazine Gong spoke of a "depressing drama on a deadly serious topic". The events in Kunduz are presented “in an authentic, ruthless and depressing way. Raymond Ley describes the events from the soldier's point of view and from the perspective of the victims' relatives, relentlessly open and credible. ”The“ authentic images from Kunduz ”would“ deeply shake ”. The film received five out of six points, which corresponds to the rating “very good”.
Awards
- Nominated for the Prix Europa .
- Nominated at the Baden-Baden TV Film Festival for the 3sat audience award as one of twelve films for best TV film of 2013.
- Matthias Brandt received the German Television Prize 2013 for his performance in four television films, including A Murderous Decision .
- Grimme Prize 2014 to Hannah Ley (book), Raymond Ley (book / director) and Matthias Brandt (presentation).
Web links
- A murderous decision in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- A murderous decision Summary of the plot of the film on the ARD website
- A murderous decision at Einsfestival with background information
- Christian Buß : Kunduz docu-drama: The Bundeswehr in a silent bunker at spiegel.de/kultur, September 3, 2013.
- A murderous decision (PDF; 3.9 MB) NDR press kit with extensive information
Individual evidence
- ↑ A murderous decision Gallery of contemporary witnesses at daserste.de. Retrieved November 21, 2013.
- ↑ Christian Buß: TV film about Kunduz bombing: The colonel and the death In: Spiegel Online, August 16, 2013. Accessed on November 21, 2013.
- ^ Verena Nees: A Murderous Decision A film about the Bundeswehr massacre in Kunduz four years ago, September 12, 2013. Accessed on September 21, 2013.
- ↑ Press kit A murderous decision (PDF; 3.9 MB) at ndr.de. Retrieved November 21, 2013.
- ↑ Start dates for A Murderous Decision . (No longer available online.) In: IMDb.de. Formerly in the original ; Retrieved September 6, 2013 . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Das Erste Anne Will on September 4th, 2013: A murderous decision - Kunduz and the consequences at presseportal.de. Retrieved November 21, 2013.
- ↑ A murderous decision ARD shows a documentary about the bombing of Afghanistan, September 3, 2013. Accessed on November 21, 2013.
- ↑ A murderous decision at filmstarts.de. Retrieved November 21, 2013.
- ↑ A murderous decision. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Steffen Hebestreit: Mysterious Task Force. "Decision at Kunduz". In: Frankfurter Rundschau . August 30, 2013, accessed January 4, 2014 .
- ↑ Kunduz - A murderous decision ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: tvspielfilm.de. Retrieved September 6, 2013.
- ↑ Niels Kruse: A murderous decision Overstretched bureaucrat in the Tarnfleck In: Stern.de, September 4, 2013. Retrieved on November 21, 2013.
- ↑ Klaudia Wick: TV film "A murderous decision" at tittelbach.tv. Retrieved November 21, 2013.
- ↑ A murderous decision In: TV magazine Hörzu No. 35 of 23 August 2013, p. 76
- ↑ A murderous decision In: TV magazine Gong No. 35 of 23 August 2013, p. 71
- ^ Prix Europa: "A Murderous Decision" and "The Fall - Honecker's End" nominated by ndr.de. Retrieved November 21, 2013.
- ↑ A murderous decision ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Audience Award Film 10 at 3sat.de. Retrieved November 21, 2013.
- ^ German TV Prize 2013 at daserste.de. Retrieved November 21, 2013.
