The shooting of Measures of Men [+lire aussi :
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interview : Lars Kraume
fiche film] (provisional title Ein Platz an der Sonne, lit. “A Place in the Sun”) has started in Namibia. German director Lars Kraume is known for making several dramas that deal with historical events from Germany's past. After The People vs. Fritz Bauer [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
interview : Lars Kraume
fiche film] (2015) and The Silent Revolution [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
fiche film] (2018), both set in the 1950s (one dealing with the Jewish genocide and the other with political repression in the GDR), he now goes back to the beginning of the 20^th century. The film focuses on a young German ethnologist who goes to the colony of German South West Africa and witnesses the genocide on the Herero and Nama population. Kraume is directing the film and wrote the script as well.

“Colonialism is one of the greatest unpunished crimes in human history. This film is for an audience that wants to rebel against forgetting,” says the director about his motivation to make the feature. “In Namibia, the genocide is still like an open wound,” adds producer Thomas Kufus, stressing the importance of the project. Shooting will take place until mid-October in Namibia, bringing together an international team of German, Namibian and South African actors and crew members. Starring in the main role is Leonard Scheicher (The Silent Revolution), flanked by Herero actress Girley Charlene Jazama and Peter Simonischek (Toni Erdmann [+lire aussi :
critique
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Q&A : Maren Ade
fiche film]) in a supporting part. Around 60 members of the Herero and Nama population will appear in front of the camera as well.

Hoffmann (Scheicher) is an ambitious ethnology student in Berlin. When he meets the interpreter (Jazama) of the Herero and Nama delegation from German South West Africa on their visit to Germany, he develops an intense interest in the population. His experiences come to contradict the common evolutionist, racially based theories he has been confronted with up until that point. When it comes to the civil war, he is on the ground, travelling around and collecting artefacts that will form part of the collection of the modern-day Berlin Ethnological Museum. Hoffmann witnesses the cruelties of war, but he himself crosses moral boundaries when he agrees to collect Herero and Nama skeletons for research purposes.

Measures of Men is a production by Zero One Film in co-production with StudioCanal and ZDF/ARTE as well as Akzente Film. The movie is being funded by the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (MBB), Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, Moin Filmförderung Hamburg Schleswig Holstein, the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien) and the German Motion Picture Fund (GMPF). StudioCanal is in charge of the worldwide distribution.