In the Name of the People Backdrop Blur
In the Name of the People Poster

In the Name of the People

In this German film, inmates guilty of a prison murder are put on trial before a court consisting of other inmates. The trial is given the full formal treatment it might receive in a civilian setting. The key point in this film is that these are the actual murderers admitting their actual crimes before a judges' panel consisting of their peers: actual prisoners at the same institution. Having no force of law, the trial proceeds without reaching a conclusion. That is something the viewer is asked to provide. This movie won a Silver Bear from the 1974 Berlin Film Festival.

Top Cast

  • Gerd Siekmann

    Gerd Siekmann

    Richter

  • Heinz-Dietrich Stark

    Heinz-Dietrich Stark

    Anstaltsleiter

  • Hajo Wandschneider

    Hajo Wandschneider

    Rechtsanwalt

Overview

In this German film, inmates guilty of a prison murder are put on trial before a court consisting of other inmates. The trial is given the full formal treatment it might receive in a civilian setting. The key point in this film is that these are the actual murderers admitting their actual crimes before a judges' panel consisting of their peers: actual prisoners at the same institution. Having no force of law, the trial proceeds without reaching a conclusion. That is something the viewer is asked to provide. This movie won a Silver Bear from the 1974 Berlin Film Festival.

Rating

7.0 / 10
1 Reviews
0 Popular

Recommendations

Night Will Fall

When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".

Night Will Fall

7.6 2014