14/02/2025 - BERLINALE 2025: Martina Priessner signs an immensely profound documentary about the continuous trauma inflicted by an event 30 years ago, all while speaking to Germany’s sociopolitical landscape

In response to global crises and shifts in national politics, Germany is grappling anew with how it remembers its history and actions. Out of this context springs a film by documentarian Martina Priessner – whose two other features have also examined the lives of people of Turkish descent – which looks at intergenerational trauma through a distinct lens. The Moelln Letters [+see also:
trailer
interview: Martina Priessner
film profile], which world-premiered in the Berlinale’s Panorama strand, tackles a racist and Islamophobic arson attack that occurred in northern Germany over three decades ago. Yet the film could not be more well-timed, dramatically reflecting back on a sociopolitical sphere still figuring out how best to reckon with shame and historical acts of violence.

One night in November 1992, neo-Nazis threw firebombs into houses occupied by two Turkish-German families in the town of Moelln. Mother Hava Arslan, her infant Namık and older son İbrahim were among the survivors of the horrific tragedy that claimed the lives of the brothers’ grandmother Bahide, cousin Ayşe Yılmaz and sister Yeliz. Thousands sent letters of support and solidarity to the town addressed to the families – but, oddly, none of them ever arrived. Instead, they were all taken, opened and left to metaphorically rot in the Moelln city archives until 2019. Nobody knows why.

Priessner first introduces us to adult İbrahim: with a deep scar on his left cheek, he is the sole sibling who remembers the attack and suffers from immense anxiety and survivor’s guilt. Trauma manifests differently in Namık, who gained weight due to stress and is aggressively protective of his family. Their sister, Yeliz Burhan, born after the attack and named after their late sister, likens her name to a burden rather than an honour.

The documentarian’s visual style is decidedly simple and to-the-point, a fanfare-free observational approach that focuses the camera almost entirely on those affected. "Remembrance is about acting,” someone says at a memorial event. And so, İbrahim takes his fight to the local government, engaging in conversations with bureaucrats about the letters and travelling to visit those who wrote to the families at the time.

Hypotheses swirl around why the letters were never passed on even though the city responded to some. "It was an exceptional situation for everyone,” claims the current mayor. With cinematography by Ayşe Alacakaptan and Julia Geiß, the camera drifts to the longtime archivist, Christian Lopau, as if waiting for him to follow up on this superficial excuse – but he only stutters through his words, seemingly holding back secrets from that time.

This repetitive act of withholding is a profound metaphor for a default response to tragedy: by ignoring, one can forget, and by expressing shame, one can feel absolved. "It makes me ashamed to be German,” wrote then-12-year-old Sonja Jansen in a letter. Shame becomes a recurring theme that Priessner sharply emphasises; one note is signed by “an ashamed, furious, mourning German woman”. These were well-intentioned letters from people who simply wanted to help, but the rhetoric speaks to a continuous social malaise.

What we witness is ultimately symptomatic of a society where pain and suffering are bureaucratised and rationalised. Priessner’s method is to act as the antidote to this by exposing us repeatedly to accounts of intergenerational trauma from the victims and those empathising with them. The goal is not pity, and it’s certainly not shame, but viewers are forced to feel deeply through the siblings’ stories. If one thing is clear by the end of The Moelln Letters, it’s that bureaucratisation is not true remembrance – a condolence letter here, a memorial there; only real actions could serve as such.

The Moelln Letters is a German production by Berlin-based company inselfilm produktion, and its world sales are handled by Cologne-based outfit New Docs.