We Are Young. We Are Strong.

A fair example of how good film-making and good storytelling are two different things. This is a great-looking movie, with an impressive cast and sophisticated cinematography. Unfortunately, the story is slow and cumbersome and the characters are unrealistic and poorly developed. Given how fascinating the subject matter is, there is really no excuse for the movie to leave you so unconnected as a viewer.

Very good, but it's that movie that causes revolt, like any movie based on real events that exudes xenophobia, prejudice, bullying, Nazism, racism, it hurts and makes us see how rotten humanity can be (at least a small part of it) and the great part that is omitted, and that by silencing ourselves, we oppress the oppressed and exalt the oppressors, beautiful film, worth the reflection...

We are young, we are strong addresses the violent xenophobic events against an Asylum Seekers Reception Center (ZASt) in Lichtenhagen, a district of the city of Rostock, on the Baltic Sea, a city that belonged to the former East Germany. The center was over-capacity and many refugees (many of them Romanians / Gypsies) were camping nearby.

The film approaches the narrative from three points of view: that of a group of disenchanted young people after German reunification, unemployed and idle, who adhere to neo-Nazi slogans; that of a disenchanted Social Democratic official who does not know very well what to do in the face of the conflict and that of a group of Vietnamese residents who lived in a monoblock located in front of the Center (some already with jobs and who certainly felt threatened) and focused almost all the action throughout one of those fateful days in August 1992. And all in oppressive and disenchanted black and white fully justified and with various formal achievements.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this film by Burhan Qurbani is the confusion that is generated at times about the violence that is brewing and its actors and the skein of motivations that move a group of young people to slide down the slope of xenophobia and fascism (depression, losses, unemployment, boredom, prejudice and even romance), the existence of an ever more convinced and violent leader that galvanizes him and the almost casual way of moving from that somewhat diffuse nebula to direct action. "Spontaneous" drift that also included less radicalized Rostock villagers who bowed to the excesses.

Tis movie tells a real event in 1992, Rostock-Lichtenhagen, a German city where a group of young Neo-Nazis burnt a refugee facility, followed by the applause of 3000 residents. The movie shows how it came to the riots, by a fictive group of young people which don't like to suffer in despair, which have too much time, too much criminal energy and which don't trust on the state. The fictive group of young men stand for the guys who did this in real. I know, when it happened, I was a young man. And eventhough I live in another federal state of Germany, I still know that I knew it was a bad sign for the future. This movie is filmed in b/w and that's good. The colorless pictures give a good guess, how this people hated. My heart is with the people of vietnam who suffered the hate at this day. Very good movie, it actually shows the spirit of that time. I recommend it to all people who want to know more about the incidents of Rostock-Lichtenhagen.

The movie focuses on a group of aimless youths with bleak prospects and their role in the riots against the asylum seekers' house. The other thread shows a local politician, who is the father of one of the depicted youths and who is being left alone by his superiors.

Although the group's inner dynamics and their frustrations are dealt with in a very sensitive way, the action is extremely slow paced and not very emotionally engaging.

After having watched the movie, I wanted to know what really happened that night in Rostock Lichtenhagen. So I turned to the Wikipedia article covering the infamous event. And there it was: the real thriller!

I will not reveal my conclusions, but there were very strange things going on the federal level, very strange things said by the heads of the then ruling CDU, very strange directions to the police. Read it yourself, you will hardly believe it!

Let me give you just one example: in the aftermath, there was only one member of the two big parties CDU and SPD (the latter ruling in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) truly condemning the riots as well as the failure of the government, Knut Degner. The next day he was released from office (!).

So the real thriller happened not in Rostock on the streets but in Bonn and Schwerin behind closed doors. The movie should have taken this in to account. Or maybe a documentary would have been genre more appropriate.