What the feuilletons once labeled the “Berlin School” has become far more discerning and interesting: Benjamin Heisenberg’s ÜBER-ICH UND DIE is an easy-going weirdo comedy, Christian Petzold has made masterful post-war pulp with PHOENIX and Christoph Hochhäusler makes 70s conspiracy thrillers seem vital again in THE LIES OF THE VICTORS. Remiscent of Alan Pakula’s classic ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, THE LIES OF THE VICTORS tailgates a journalistic duo – Fabian (Florian David Fitz) and Nadja (Lilith Stangenberg) - who go after a hot cover story and end up discovering a tangled web. The deeper they delve in, the more real injustice they uncover.

Hochhäusler’s aesthetic self-assurance reaches a new apex with THE LIES OF THE VICTORS: the truth slowly crystallizes despite the political and journalistic mechanisms that do its utmost to keep it covered up. The magnificently shot spaces are unclear and hazy; hypnotic light reflections reinforce the slightly unreal atmosphere that is established despite all of the information coming to light. This mood can be read as an allegory for the media business that prioritize the big picture above everything else. It is a wonderful, unsettling film that goes beyond the “Berlin School” clichés, proving that German genre cinema is possible and that it can also be more than a provincial regurgitation of bigger role models provided that it focuses on the social realities of the here and now.

Thomas Groh

Translation: Elinor Lewy