Zivilcourage (2010)

Peter Jordan owns a small secondhand bookshop in Berlin-Neukölln. Hausmannstraße, where Jordan lives and works, is a troubled area from which the middle-class population has almost entirely withdrawn, and where violent crime is rife. Most of the residents are impoverished and have a migrant background. Jordan supervises the student Jessica during her project week at his shop. One evening, on his way home, he sees Jessica’s boyfriend, Afrim, beating up an old man after the man racially insults Afrim. After hesitating at first, Jordan intervenes and calls the police, managing to make Afrim stop attacking his victim. Afrim is known to the police and has several previous convictions, so he could face a prison sentence if the case goes to trial. Convinced that he did the right thing, Jordan files a criminal complaint and identifies Afrim as the perpetrator. In the days that follow, Jordan is subjected to all kinds of retaliation. First, Afrim himself threatens and physically attacks him several times. Then Afrim’s older brother Dalmat, a former Kosovo soldier, comes to see him. Dalmat puts pressure first on Jordan and then on Jordan’s daughter and her family, and eventually breaks two of Jordan’s fingers. Afrim also beats Jordan up with his friends one night as Jordan is walking home. The young men even film the attack on a mobile phone, but lose it while fleeing, and Jessica finds it. While looking for the phone, which is evidence of Afrim’s attack, his brother Dalmat ransacks Jordan’s apartment. Dalmat also threatens Jordan’s friends Klaus and Katja with a knife. Jordan repeatedly wonders whether he should withdraw his criminal complaint against Afrim, as his friends, family, and even the landlord of his regular pub gradually distance themselves from him out of fear of violence. Although Jordan’s entire life lies in ruins by the end of the film, he refuses to back down and keeps his complaint in place. Jessica, who initially regarded Jordan with incomprehension and rejection, gains insight into the world of literature through him. She begins to engage with Romeo and Juliet and Shakespeare, and to question her life in this troubled neighborhood. Since she is illiterate, Jordan also offers to teach her to read and write. In the final confrontation, the two Lima brothers show up at Jordan’s secondhand bookshop once again. Jordan threatens them with a pistol he acquired from his pub landlord. Jessica intervenes, however, and admits that she found the phone and has already put the video evidence online. Saying that otherwise she would never learn to read, she manages to persuade Jordan not to shoot the two men. In the closing shot, Afrim Lima is shown being taken away by the police.