The German Sisters

Inspired by the cases of Gudrun Ensslin - the Baader-Meinhof terrorist and Stammheim 'suicide' - and her journalist sister, von Trotta once again takes up questions of the roots and potential paths of women's resistance and revolt, creating a disturbing mosaic of personal and state histories around a sisterly relationship of intriguingly contradictory complexity. As in The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, terrorism itself is an offscreen phenomenon; its ramifications at the personal level, and its unlabelled reactionary equivalents, marking the film's painful subject across at least a generation: from two schoolgirls watching film of the concentration camps to a young son almost burned alive in the '80s because of his now notorious parentage. A bold assertion of the continuity of history from the culture most willing to deny it, and fine, accessible political film-making.