FRG 1987 | Director, Screenplay: Katrin Seybold, Melanie Spitta | Camera Alfred Tichawsky, Heiner Stadler, Klaus Bartels | Editing: Annette Dorn, Thea Eymèsz | Music: Georges Boulanger | Sound: Werner Dobusch | Production: Katrin Seybold Film GmbH | Colour | DCP | 84 Min. | romani, german OV with english SUB | Filmmuseum München

The voice of evidence and accusation speaking off-screen is insistent, precise and unyielding. It belongs to Melanie Spitta, the child of survivors of Sinti persecution during the Nazi era. In The Lie, Spitta holds the “thread of truth”, as her co-director Katrin Seybold puts it, in this first coherent portrayal of the genocide of Germany’s Sinti population. Reconstructed on the basis of unpublished “police files and photos of racial researchers, documents of total registration.” Survivors of the camps open up to Spitta and speak of terrible things. Not least about how post-war society treated them, the few who survived: “The courts believed the perpetrators, not us, the victims.” Everything about this treatment was wrong, there were no “reparations.” The more calmly Spitta speaks, the clearer it becomes how much strength it costs her. And, in turn, the louder the brutal injustice is proclaimed to the world.

This digitally restored version comes from the Filmmuseum München under the supervision of Stefan Drößler and Carmen Spitta, produced by Film Shift GmbH as part of the BKM, Länder and FFA film heritage funding programme.

Content Notes