Special Screening + Q&A: Das Deutsche Volk (The German People)

Shot over four years, Marcin Wierzchowski’s sensitive documentary Das Deutsche Volk (The German People) about the impact of a lethal racist attack in Germany in 2020 on the survivors, family and friends and their struggle for justice, brings structural racism to the surface.

We are pleased that following the screening, director Marcin Wierzchowski will be present for a Q&A, hosted by Dr. Paul Leworthy (Newcastle University).

On the night of February 9, 2020, the right-wing extremist Tobias Rathjen murdered nine people with a migrant background in Hanau: Gökhan Gültekin, Sedat Gürbüz, Said Nesar Hashemi, Mercedes Kierpacz, Hamza Kurtović, Vili Viorel Păun, Fatih Saraçoğlu, Ferhat Unvar and Kaloyan Velkov. It has been one of the most lethal racist attacks in Germany, leaving behind mourning families and survivors who fight for justice and against the forgetting of those who were murdered.

Over four years, film director Marcin Wierzchowski accompanies the victims’ loved ones as they navigate grief and loss, documenting their struggle for justice, their calls for acknowledgement and their determination not to be treated as second-class citizens. As politicians search for the right words and many questions regarding the crime go unanswered, those left behind set out to find answers themselves. Together, they reconstruct the events of the night of the attack and demand consequences.

As the film details their exposure of the structural racism expressed not only in the crime itself but also in how they are treated by the authorities, it poses important and difficult questions: What immediate and long-term consequences did the attack have on these people and Hanau? And what does it say about Germany?

Germany 2025, colour, 132 mins. With English subtitles.

Written and directed by Marcin Wierzchowski. With Çetin Gültekin, Emiş Gürbüz, Said Etris Hashemi, Armin Kurtović, Piter Minnemann, Niculescu Păuns, et al.

This screening is one of five in the UK taking place between 27 April and 1 May 2026. Organised by Paul Leworthy with support by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) and the Goethe-Institut.

About the Director Marcin Wierzchowski

Marcin Wierzchowski, born in Warsaw in 1984, is a director and producer. His parents fled Poland to Germany due to the imposition of martial law. At the age of 17, Wierzchowski left school and began working at a video rental store, where he watched countless films and decided to become a director.

In 2012, he completed his secondary education (Abitur) and subsequently began studying philosophy in Frankfurt am Main. In 2013, he transferred to the Mainz Academy of Art, where he studied Fine Arts with a focus on film under Professor Harald Schleicher.

Today, he lives and works in Frankfurt am Main and Warsaw. His first film, the 47-minute documentary Hanau – Eine Nacht und Ihre Folgen [Hanau – One Night and Its Aftermath], was awarded the Grimme Prize in 2022 and serves as the basis for his feature-length film The German People (2025), which premiered at the Berlinale 2025. In 2021, he was awarded the Gerd Ruge Fellowship by the Film and Media Foundation NRW for the production of his documentary project Traumaland. (Source: press materials for the film)

About Paul Leworthy

Paul Leworthy is currently Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the School of Modern Languages at Newcastle University, working on a project entitled ‘Reading Reconstruction: Literary Responses to Rebuilding in Postwar West Germany’. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from The University of Edinburgh. The Shape of Memory: Containers, Surfaces and Forms of Remembering in Post-War European Literature, a gold open access monograph derived from his PhD thesis, will appear this year with Peter Lang. An International Fellow of the Frankfurt Memory Studies Platform, he is host of the Connecting Memories Podcast series, founding co-Editor-in-Chief of Memory Studies Review, and Publicity Officer of the AGS.

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Host or Publisher Goethe-Institut London