Une jeunesse allemande (2015)

The film chronologically retraces the history of the Red Army Faction (), from the origins of the far-left organization to the deaths of its leading figures in prison, and the reception of its terrorist actions in 1970s West Germany. Built from visual and audio archives, it juxtaposes the cinematic and ideological output of the future members of the Red Army Faction with television footage from the period, offering an unprecedented and striking portrait of this tragic saga. The project took shape only after eight to nine years of research. The detailed chronology established by the director conveys the scale of this archival research. The trajectories of Ulrike Meinhof, Andreas Baader, Holger Meins, Gudrun Ensslin, and the lawyer Horst Mahler are presented through visual and audio documentation of the founders of the group known as the “Baader Gang” or the “Baader-Meinhof Group.” Using this original, often previously unseen material, Jean-Gabriel Périot traces the group’s shift toward revolutionary violence and its impact on German society. It is the story of a generation of young people who began their protest journey in the 1960s by rejecting the past of a Germany that had not officially undertaken denazification, and ended it in the late 1970s in the prisons of the federal state, after carrying out a series of deadly attacks. Without ever taking sides, Jean-Gabriel Périot directly addresses the question of political violence, attempting to decipher the possibilities of revolutionary action during the Federal Republic of Germany’s twelve years of lead (1965–1977).