The film is about the German Sinti and Roma’s different forms of resistance spanning eight decades. It’s about revolt against injustice and about insistence on dignity and justice. A story of courage and resolve of individuals who desperately defended themselves. And the story of suffering of a minority caught between trauma and self-assertion: an ongoing unprecedented injustice throughout all of the post-war years to this very day. It is based around Romani Rose, his family and fellow campaigners. Thirteen close relatives of the Rose family were murdered in concentration camps. Romani Rose’s father Oskar went into hiding during the Nazi years and was wanted by the Gestapo. The film is about his courageous actions. And about his attempt in April 1943 to beg Munich’s Cardinal Faulhaber to protect the persecuted, and how he manged to free his brother from the concentration camp in Neckarelz. For Roma and Sinti who survived the genocide, discrimination, poverty and authorities’ chicanery were part of everyday life. The Porajmos, the genocide against this minority group, was only officially recognized in 1982. The film describes their long journey away from their lack of rights and discrimination and into a civil rights movement. Their untiring commitment is testimony to their moral courage and public spirit, their decisive advocacy of cooperation between various cultures and their ground-breaking vision of democracy. Is there anything more important in times of increasing marginalization and racist violence?
Festivals/Awards
2022 3sat Documentary Award – 46 Duisburger Flmwoche 2023 Winner of 59 GRIMME PRIZE 20 dokumentarfilmwoche hamburg 10 dokKa Karlsruhe
Cast and Crew
Director Peter Nestler
Director of Photography Rainer Komers
Other Dieter Reifarth (Co-Director)
Director's Statement
Peter Nestler on the films INJUSTICE AND RESISTANCE and AN OPEN MIND In the sixties I learned of this constant injustice, was made aware of it, especially by the works of the painter Otto Pankok, whom I met in 1965, and by the social work of Birgitta Wolf, by the writings of Hermann Langbein, who was one of the main witnesses in the Auschwitz trial. I learned about the uninterrupted discrimination against the minority in Germany and Austria, where everything revolved around reconstruction, about economic advancement. The war crimes were put to rest, and the many perpetrators, former SS members and criminal police officers, as well as the ›racial hygiene researchers‹, returned to their offices and positions, continued to discriminate and exclude the Sinti and Roma for decades. In 1970 I made the film »Being Gypsy«, which gave people of the minority an opportunity to tell about their experiences. The new films, »Injustice and Resistance« and »The Open View«, are an extensive inventory from a contemporary perspective with contributions from people of the minority, the descendants of the survivors, the historians who deal with deep-rooted antigypsyism (get involved!), with poets, musicians, photographers and filmmakers, journalists. What has changed, has improved since the post-war years, and what remains bad? These are parts of the films that we, the team, have put together. That and nothing else.
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