PROSECUTION (STAATSSCHUTZ) Discovery

USA Premiere

Following his lyrical award-winning debut NO HARD FEELINGS, German-Iranian filmmaker Faraz Shariat returns to the realm of radically queer and post-migrant cinema with this propulsive, gritty procedural. In a modest East German neighborhood, we follow German Korean state prosecutor Seyo Kim (newcomer Chen Emilie Yan in a star-making turn), who is serving her workplace probation period and eager to prove herself. Her ambition soon gives way to frustration at the German judicial system — which ostensibly prides itself in neutrality and objectivity — when her department reflects a low success rate of hate crime prosecutions, while her day-to-day duty includes defending right-wing extremists who brazenly show off their neo-Nazi insignias. When Seyo herself becomes the target of a Molotov cocktail racist attack, her rogue investigation draws her into the ever growing, malevolent web of underground far-right extremist networks, challenging both her belief in the legal system and her personal integrity. Outfitted with a slick, jet black Dodge Challenger, Chen embodies the vigilante heroine with a magnetic, relentless drive and defiance that heralds the arrival of a new feminist icon. Rejecting conventions of the polemic, with an atmospheric score by Icelandic pianist Gabríel Ólafs, Shariat composes a genre-defying, high-octane procedural thriller that is at once keenly politically-charged and deliciously entertaining in its sleek, immersive handling of tone. Recipient of the Panorama Audience Award at this year’s Berlinale, PROSECUTION is a furious, unapologetic indictment of Germany’s concession to neo-fascism and the complicity of centrist ideology in the face of a disturbing rise in far-right movements. –Anna Li