German, Romani with English subtitles

In The Lie, Katrin Seybold and Melanie Spitta document the persecution and murder of Sinti under the Nazis, as well as the repression and denial of this genocide in post-war Germany. Based on numerous interviews and research in police archives that was carried out despite all obstacles, the two authors prove what German courts refused to acknowledge: That the total registration, discrimination, ghettoisation and extermination of the “Gypsies” – the label given to a racially constructed population that does not necessarily correspond to the cultural identities of the Sinti and Roma – did not begin in 1943, but much earlier. Based on so-called “expert” reports by Nazi racial researchers who had helped to prepare and enable the systematic persecution of the Sinti, the victims were granted little material compensation. “The courts believed the perpetrators, not us, the victims,” says Melanie Spitta, herself the daughter of an Auschwitz survivor, in the film. Her voice of argumentation and accusation is haunting, precise, and unyielding. Without concealing the author’s resignation to the lack of public recognition for the injustice suffered, The Lie is a testimony to both grief and resistance to systematic forgetting.

• Sektion Section: Feature Films
• Programm Programme: The Lie