Schattenwelt

Long Shadows starts with the early release of the RAF terrorist Widmer, who has to find his way in a changed German society after 22 years in jail. Sentenced for the murder of a businessman and his gardener, he bears the burden of a heavy political heritage. He gets an apartment beside another client of his lawyer, the young Valerie, whose son has been taken into care because of a single case of abuse by his mother. The two do not seem to be more than average neighbours, but their first encounters quickly make one suspect a different scenario.
Long Shadows is not another classic RAF drama, but focuses without idealisation or sentimentality on the scars left by the deeds of the RAF on the second and third-generation victims. The composed rhythm of the film hides the complex psychology of a young woman who wants to avenge the death of her father and the desire of a terrorist to see his son, with whom he has never had contact since his detention. The director increasingly allows their worlds and those of the lawyer and an investigator to become entangled, until there’s a new and violent climax with another innocent victim. Guilt, revenge and liberation acquire an under-cooled layer in Long Shadows that, told chronologically, keeps adopting new, unpredictable dimensions right up to the end.

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