Skip to playerSkip to main content
  • 14 hours ago
Building on testimony from pro-Palestinian activists in Berlin and featuring demonstration footage from between 2023 and 2025, this animated documentary explores activist culture and the people who have spent the past 2 years clashing with German police. By applying an expressive and colourful brush stroke to the experiences and anecdotes of two people closely involved with the movement, we look into the motivations that have driven them to get involved and their reactions to the repression they have experienced. Staatsraison attempts to shine light on police violence and explore how repression can drive someone ever further into a political movement.
Transcript
00:12The first demo I went to after October 7th was this really brutal one. Never seen anything like it. I'd
00:18never seen police charge at crowds of people. I'd never seen them use pepper spray. I'd never seen them like
00:23grabbing kids out of the crowd and punching them and putting them in police vans.
00:28Like this was all insane to me at the time. And once you see that you kind of, I think
00:34it does radicalize you further.
00:36I've been arrested like I think 15 times or something, have been put into jail, had people like shake my
00:45body on all the tattoos, noting them down, taking pictures of my profile and like all the different angles of
00:51myself and therefore also being now really fast recognizable at like demonstrations.
01:08You feel so agitated inside of yourself. A cop could come at like any moment arrest you or like come
01:15in, beat up somebody or take somebody else. So it's always like high voltage for like everyone.
01:22I'm also a nasty racist called racist films and myTurns album it's always like song okay so you have to
01:43pick up your life and you have to fight you on.
01:50And then when the police pull away, they go out and start singing again.
01:53I mean, that's a riot, you know.
01:56Riot seems like a strong word for it.
01:59It could also be that the police decide, today we forbid Arabic.
02:03So if we hear Arabic, then we're going to shut down the demonstration.
02:07And obviously you can imagine the anger that people could feel.
02:11Being basically in 1933 and forbidding languages is, I think, very reminiscent of our past.
02:21You see people fight back and you see people win these standoffs with police.
02:25Where the police are in your face, they form this war, they threaten to charge,
02:29and people are backing down and eventually the police back up and walk away.
02:33And the first few times I saw that happen in Berlin, it's like, come on, this is it.
02:39We can actually do this stuff.
03:13We can actually do this stuff.
03:13We've got to hate back there on it.
03:15We can constantly do it.
03:15We can't even think of it.
03:15We're doing it.
Comments