A film made entirely of newspaper clippings — history as collage, trauma as headlines.
A drama that strings together vignettes of events taken from everyday newspaper headlines. Germans are shown in their reactions to World War II, minorities, and the elderly. A side plot follows a meeting between former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and East German leader Erich Honecker.
Direction
Kluge's radical montage — narrative as archaeological dig.
Editing
Jarring juxtapositions that force you to connect the dots.
Director
Alexander Kluge
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Part of the New German Cinema movement, Kluge was a lawyer-turned-filmmaker who co-authored the 1962 Oberhausen Manifesto demanding 'new German feature films.'
The title references how Germans consume history as miscellaneous news — trivializing genocide through everyday distraction.
DE
