Die Anwälte - Eine Deutsche Geschichte (2009)

The film presents an overview of German history from the beginning of the 1968 movement through 2009, using portraits of the lawyers Otto Schily, Hans-Christian Ströbele, and Horst Mahler. It begins with a dpa press photograph from 1973 showing the three in a Berlin courtroom: Mahler is in the dock, while Schily and Ströbele are his defense attorneys. The documentary traces the biographies of the three men, who at the time, as lawyers for the left-wing Extra-Parliamentary Opposition (APO), fought against the Federal Republic of Germany as a state they regarded as restrictive, sometimes using radical means. It shows when they embarked on very different paths in life and ultimately became political opponents. Today, Schily is a former SPD federal minister, Ströbele is a Green politician, while Mahler has become an avowed far-right extremist and a convicted Holocaust denier. Combining archival material and interviews, the film shows how the Extra-Parliamentary Opposition emerged. It also depicts the steadily growing resistance to US policy in Vietnam and to former Nazis holding important positions in the West German state. Apart from a brief introduction, the film contains no commentary.