After being the target of an arson attack by neo-Nazis in the fictional Southern German town of Neuwerda, public prosecutor (and pseudo-alt girl) Seyo Kim’s fury burns bright – but instead of backing down, she emerges with a wolfcut, a firearms licence, a matte-black Dodge Challenger and a vengeance. Brought to life by sparkplug newcomer Chen Emilie Yan, Seyo becomes a self-fashioned vigilante of the common people in Teddy Award winner Faraz Shariat’s sophomore feature, Prosecution, which has world-premiered in the Berlinale Panorama, blending courtroom-cum-legal drama with thriller to create a picture that will make you rightfully angry.

Having originally become a prosecutor to use the authority of the state for good, Seyo decides to take her arson case to court – now on the other side of the table. Represented by Alexandra Tiedemann (Silver Bear winner Julia Jentsch), whom the public prosecutor’s office typically sees as a nuisance, she enters full-force investigator mode, even when told not to do so by top dog Forsch (Arnd Klawitter). She begins gathering past victims of neo-Nazi attacks, collecting digital evidence from far-right forums, and even breaking in to the prosecutor’s archives in search of cover-ups with the hesitant help of her sympathetic German-Turkish colleague Ayten (Alev Irmak).

Seyo weaves a huge web of connections until it begins to consume her, much to the concern of her partner, Min-su (Kotbong Yang). The more she uncovers in shock, the more the purported objectivity of the system begins to crumble. At the film’s most introspective moments, Shariat inserts pieces of a mournful orchestral score by Gabríel Ólafs, juxtaposed with the menacing revving of Seyo’s new sports car (with sound design by Henning Hein), as if to shake us from our passive state. Words spoken in the courtroom also have a certain aural reverb to them, a stylistic choice that allows these scenes to completely occupy the viewer’s attention, whereas the simple staging enables us to focus instead on the intricacies of the legal deliberation.

“We have the world’s most objective legal system,” says Seyo’s senior colleague Quant (Sebastian Urzendowsky), but she thinks this line of reasoning is not enough any more. Rather, objectivity is a fraud, and it’s equally our job to use the system against itself to fight injustice. In this way, Prosecution is clearly a film for this moment, as the world begins to reckon with the social and governmental structures we’re told to put our faith in. Shariat’s continued attention to centring a queer person of colour in his choice of protagonist – here, a young, queer German-Korean woman – ensures that we also remember that it could be any of us in a similar position. We are here, he says, and that’s a fact, not a point that's up for discussion.

Elbow [+lee también:
crítica
entrevista: Aslı Özarslan
ficha de la película] screenwriter Claudia Schaefer pens the screenplay with the support of Sun-Ju Choi and Jee-Un Kim, an anti-racism expert and jurist, respectively – and it shows. The specificity of the legal dialogue makes all the difference in fostering a believable frame in which the thriller elements may operate while still being deeply in touch with the realities of Germany’s juridical system. From here, Shariat begins to throw caution to the wind, leaving behind some of the groundedness in the second half of the movie, where perhaps the retribution for Seyo’s actions feels unbelievably light (or perhaps not – depending on how you view the system itself). But by this point, he has you holding on to the side of his speeding train, furiously along for the ride.

Prosecution is a production by Berlin-based Jünglinge Film GmbH. New Europe Film Sales is managing its world sales.