Love Parade – The Trial

by Dominik Wessely
  • 2020 PBS International | mindjazz pictures
  • 2020 PBS International | mindjazz pictures
  • 2020 PBS International | mindjazz pictures
  • 2020 PBS International | mindjazz pictures
  • 2020 PBS International | mindjazz pictures
  • 2020 PBS International | mindjazz pictures
  • 2020 PBS International | mindjazz pictures

    Synopsis

    What began 1989 as a tiny street parade in Berlin has long since grown into a million-strong spectacle garnering international attention. In 2010, the “Love Parade” left Berlin for a tour of the Ruhr valley, German’s former industrial stronghold, a region weak in infrastructure and youth appeal. Hundreds of thousands of electronic music lovers took pilgrimage to Duisburg to celebrate, but the day tragically ended in a fatal stampede. What went wrong?

    The location of the parade was a former freight yard and the only entrance and exit to the venue was a narrow ramp. There, the crowd squeezed. 21 attendees died and 652 more were injured and traumatized. The Trial reveals the corporate greed and public negligence at the expense of young people from around the world gathering for a music festival. With unprecedented access, the film unravels the worst disaster in counter-culture history.

    • “Outstanding” — Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
    • “Important and valuable” — Sueddeutsche Zeitung
    • “Thrilling” — Münchner Merkur
    • “Extremely dense and unbelievably close to its protagonists“ — Der SPIEGEL

    Festivals

    2020
    Nominated for the award of the German Academy for Television
    Nominated for the Gaudi-Awards, Spain
    In-edit Film Festival, Barcelona

    2021
    Grimme Award 2021 for Antje Boehmert (Writer/Producer) & Dominik Wessely (Director)

    This is an outstandingly documentation of the difficult legal processing of the deadly mass panic in Duisburg in 2010. (…) Here, precisely in its sober restraint, a great film has succeeded.