Mediaboss Marketing

70th Berlin International Film FestivalPart 3CurveballGermanys role in the Iraq warand the horrors of the concentration camp in Persian Lessons By Stefan Steinberg 18 March 2020

This is the third in a series of articles on the Berlin International Film Festival, the Berlinale, which recently took place February 20March 1. Part 1 was posted on February 28 and Part 2 on March 11.

Curveball by German director Johannes Naber valuably turns a knife in a wound that many in the American and German intelligence communities and governments no doubt hoped had long since healedthe way in which the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 was based on entirely fraudulent and lying justifications.

Naber has made a number of notable films, including the immigrant drama The Albanian (2009), Age of Cannibals (2013) and Heart of Stone(2019).

At the premiere of Curveball in Berlin, a festival representative introduced the film, but said he could not read out its title. The film festival lists it merely as Untitled. The films name is currently the subject of a US lawsuit. After seeing Curveball, one can see why both the American and German intelligence agencies are exerting considerable influence to prevent its distribution.

Nabers film is a political satire rooted firmly in factual evidence carefully researched by the director and his team. It begins in Iraq where German biologist Dr. Arndt Desert Fox Wolf (Sebastian Blomberg), a biological warfare specialist employed by the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), fails to find any evidence of Saddam Husseins alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

The head of the BND, Schatz (Thorsten Merten), is eager to outdo the CIA and be the first to prove that Iraq possesses dangerous nerve gas. An opportunity opens up when an Iraqi seeking asylum in Germany, Rafid Alwan (Dar Salim), claims he worked as a chemical engineer in Iraq and has inside knowledge of the countrys chemical weapons programme.

Wolf is given the job of interrogating Curveball, the alias given to the Iraqi engineer. In exchange for revealing what he knows (in fact, a pack of lies), Alwan requests he be released from incarceration in a German asylum centre and given citizenship.

After a series of interrogations, Alwan takes a hint from Wolf himself and reveals that the reason for the failure of all the intelligence services to find Iraqi WMD is the ingenious use by the Hussein regime of trucks and trains to move the huge chemical vats containing dangerous gases. Absurdly, the two men agree on a crude childish diagram drawn on a napkin purporting to show a truck mounted with the massive vats. Finally, the BND leadership have a scoop to present to their American cousinsand its champagne all round for those concerned. The German chancellor at the time, Gerhard Schrder, also sends his congratulations to the BND.

Desperately seeking evidence to justify a US intervention in Iraq, the CIA is only too willing to accept the scraps from the BNDSs table. It organises the kidnapping of Curveball in Germany in order to present him as its own source. Feeling some obligation to the Iraqi fraudster, BND asset Wolf attempts to rescue him in a hilarious escape scene.

Wolf confronts the CIA agent responsible for the kidnap plan and argues in favour of reliable evidence. The CIA agent is unrepentant: The truth doesnt count, only justice matters. Wolf goes on to ask what gives the CIA the right to distort the facts. We make the facts, the female agent responds.

Towards the end of Curveball, documentary footage is shown of US Secretary of State Colin Powells infamous presentation to the UN Security Council in February 2003 in which he regurgitated Curveballs lies to justify Americas subsequent attack on Iraq. In his report, Powell stated that Iraqs weapons programme included biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails, an extensive clandestine network to supply its deadly biological and chemical weapons programmes and the obtaining of sufficient fissile material to produce a nuclear explosion. All of this, according to the secretary of state, represented facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.

Powells presentation included a sketch of a truck loaded with chemical vats based on Curveballs original napkin drawing. According to one senior US official, Curveballs lies were the main pillar of Powells report to the UN. Sitting in the UN meeting is the German Green Party leader, Joschka Fischer, who listens quietly to Powells report. BND biologist (in the meantime made redundant) Wolf watches Fischer at home on television and asks, Why doesnt he say something?

Fischer was German foreign minister in the government headed by Schrder (Social Democratic Party, SPD). Schrders head of chancellery with responsibility for liaison with Germanys intelligence services was Frank-Walter Steinmeier (also SPD), currently the countrys president.

Nabers Curveball graphically demonstrates the duplicity and criminality of Germanys role in the Iraq war. As chancellor, Schrder publicly declared the German government opposed a new war in the Middle East. Meanwhile, Germanys intelligence agency was providing the lies that Washington used to legitimise its assault on Iraq in the name of the war on terror.

Naber wants to counter what the director declares to be a false portrayal here, an idealised idea of how we Germans operate in the world. It is important, he argues, to tell the truth and question the role of the secret services and politicians responsible at that time, such as Fischer, Schrder and Steinmeier: So that children at school can no longer be taught that we were the good ones when it came to the Iraq war.

To heighten the comedic effect of his film, Naber presents the leading BND figures as provincial careerists in thrall to their American counterparts. In so doing, however, the director runs the risk of seriously underestimating the methods and character of the German ruling elite, which has been trying to achieve greater independence from the US since the reunification of Germany in 1989-1990 and is once again flexing its ruthless imperialist muscles.

In that process, the ruling class draws upon the traditions of Nazism. The BND itself emerged from the Gehlen Organisation (1946-1956), named for Reinhard Gehlen, Hitlers chief intelligence officer on the Eastern Front in World War II. After the war, he was recruited by the CIA and headed German intelligence from 1956 to 1968 in close cooperation with the US intelligence agency.

The US bombardment and invasion of Iraq war began a month after Powells testimony. Nabers film ends with statistics detailing the massive loss of Iraqi lives in the subsequent carnage, a mass murder for which Germany also bears direct responsibility.

The end credits also note that The head of the state chancellery at that time is the current federal presidenti.e., the Social Democrat Steinmeier. This credit was greeted with loud applause from the Berlin audience who clearly approved of this unmasking of Germanys leading sanctimonious war-monger.

Nabers film is due to open in German cinemas in September of this year as Film ohne Titel (Film Without a Title).

Another movie that uses black, bitter humour in its treatment of horrifically tragic events is Persian Lessons, directed by Vadim Perelman ( House of S a nd and Fog, 2003). The film is based on a short story by one of Germanys leading scriptwriters, Wolfgang Kohlhaase, and opens in occupied France in World War II with the transport of a group of Jews to a concentration camp.

A young man in the back of the truck carrying the Jews begs another young man, Gilles (Nahuel Prez Biscayart), to accept a valuable book written in Farsi, or Persian, in exchange for some food. Gilles agrees. Shortly afterwards, the truck stops in a forest and the occupants are led off to be summarily shot by the German SA troops responsible for transport to the death camps.

Facing imminent execution, Gilles pleads with the soldiers not to shoot himafter all, he argues, he is not Jewishhe is Persian and has a book to prove it. In a bizarre twist to the narrative, one of the soldiers declares he knows a commandant in the nearest camp who is keen to learn the Persian language, offering 10 cans of meat to anyone who can provide him with a teacher.

In order to survive, Gilles has to invent a phony language that he can administer in daily doses to the camp commandant, Klaus Koch (Lars Eidinger). Given the task of recording new admissions to the camp, Gilles discovers a formula for memorising his inventory of fictitious words. For his part, the camp commandant practices his newfound tongue, proudly pronouncing snippets of the names of Jewish occupants of the camp, all of whom are eventually executed by their Nazi oppressors. The actors portraying the films two main protagonists, Biscayart as Gilles and Eidinger as Koch, are outstanding.

There are moments of painfully absurdist humour in Persian Lessons in the exchanges between Gilles and the camp commandant, but we are not allowed for a moment to forget the tragic fate of the camps victims at the hands of their brutal captors. The directors juggling of humour and the tragic fate of the Jews under German occupation is reminiscent of the outstanding 1998 film by the Romanian-French director Radu Mihileanu, Train de Vie (Train of Life).

To be continued

2019 has been a year of mass social upheaval. We need you to help the WSWS and ICFI make 2020 the year of international socialist revival. We must expand our work and our influence in the international working class. If you agree, donate today. Thank you.

Read the original post:
CurveballGermany's role in the Iraq warand the horrors of the concentration camp in Persian Lessons - World Socialist Web Site