Prosecution

Chen Emilie Yan puts in a fierce performance as a German-Korean prosecutor turned vigilante in a sharp, smart and of-the-minute legal thriller. Seyo entered her profession with an idealistic drive to fight far-right hate crime. All that is turned on its head when she is herself targeted in a racist attack. She soon has to admit that the country’s public prosecution service is not as clean and objective as it likes to appear. Ignoring orders to stay off the case, she secretly investigates. As she fights to bring an assailant to trial and his wider network to light, she is confronted with the complicity of a criminal justice body she invested her life in, which has been shielding perpetrators in plain sight.

This meticulously researched and gripping Berlinale audience favourite is a damning and timely indictment of a Germany that has made public noise of denazifying society after its darkest wartime shame only to allow extremists to infiltrate back into its institutions of power. Director Faraz Shariat, gifted with a flair for drama, infuses courtroom processes with an edge-of-the-seat intensity.

- Carmen Gray