BRD 1987, D Katrin Seybold, SC Melanie Spitta, C Alfred Tichawsky, Heiner Stadler, Klaus Bartels, E Annette Dorn, Thea Eymèsz, M Georges Boulanger, P Katrin Seybold Film GmbH, N Thomas Münz, Melanie Spitta, Print colour, DCP from 16mm, 86 min, german OV +engl. SUB, Filmmuseum München

This film from Katrin Seybold and Melanie Spitta showed the persecution of German Sinti at the hands of the Nazis in its full context for the first time in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany – told from the perspective of Sinti themselves. Melanie Spitta was herself the child of survivors. In the filmmakers’ own words: “Unpublished police files and photographs of the race researchers, documents of total surveillance and registration, are the most important component of the evidence we have compiled.” DAS FALSCHE WORT is calm and upsetting at the same time, Spitta’s voice – commenting on the photos and documents from off screen – is insistent and unrelenting. For the subject here is the unfathomable injustice of the FRG’s treatment of the murders as a whole – and the continuity of said persecution into our present day. In pursuing the question of reconciliation, the filmmakers came upon previously withheld material. As Spitta adds: “This evidence compiled with utmost care by the perpetrators was not permitted to become public, in order not to have to acknowledge the genocide of our people. Instead, the perpetrators, for whom we must necessarily be criminals, were called to testify as expert witnesses in our redress proceedings. The courts believed the perpetrators, not us, the victims.”