Baader Meinhof film gets premiere in Germany
By Juliane Keck1 hour, 25 minutes ago
A film tracking the rise and fall of the Red Army Faction, a group of left-wing militants suspected of killing dozens of prominent West German figures in the 1970s and 1980s, has its premiere in Munich on Tuesday.
The documentary-style thriller is a graphic account of one of the darkest chapters in post-war Germany and has already been picked as Germany's entry for Best Foreign Language Film for Hollywood's 2009 Academy Awards.
Produced by Bernd Eichinger, best known for "Downfall" in which he fuelled controversy with his human portrayal of Hitler's last days, "The Baader Meinhof Complex" is based on a bestseller book by Stefan Aust.
Aust and the filmmakers say they have paid close attention to detail, including the number of bullets used in each assassination, and tried to make an authentic account of the movement without glorifying the militants.
The film, believed to be the most expensive film ever made in Germany, opens at cinemas across the country on September 25.
The Red Army Faction is suspected of murdering 34 people, mainly senior figures in the West German establishment, between 1970 and 1991.
"If you move from the romantic idea ... into terrorism, you should realize you are kissing goodbye to your own inflated ideas of ethics," Stefan Aust, author of the book, told Reuters.
"I believe they realized the lowliness of their doings," said Aust, a former editor of Der Spiegel newsweekly.
Also known as the "Baader-Meinhof Gang" after founders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, the Red Army Faction grew from the left-wing student protest and anti-Vietnam war movements in the late 1960s.
Its members were angry with their parent's generation who had lived through the Nazi era and had gone on to live capitalist, and -- as they viewed it -- middle-class lives.
Figures killed by the group included Dresdner Bank head Juergen Ponto and federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback.
The peak of the group's campaign of terror was the 1977 kidnapping of industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer whom they held hostage for over a month. Eventually he was executed; the identity of the faction member who shot him remains a mystery.
Some 26 members died during their campaign and many were sentenced to long prison terms. Baader and Meinhof were caught and committed suicide in prison. In 1998, the Red Army Faction said it was giving up its struggle and disbanded.
Many members have now been released and are working as teachers, accountants and journalists, some under new names.
"The brilliant performance by the cast and the extraordinary adaptation of the story allows a view of the early 1970s in the West Germany without glorifying the perpetrators," said a jury appointed by German Films to select its entry for the Oscars.
(Writing by Madeline Chambers)