MEASURES OF MEN

Director Lars Kraume is available for interviews in Berlin.

MEASURES OF MEN (Der Vermessene Mensch) by Lars Kraume is celebrating its world premiere in the Berlinale Special section at the Berlin International Film Festival 2023 on February, 22nd.

After his celebrated films “The Silent Revolution” and “The People vs. Fritz Bauer”, Lars Kraume is the first director to shed a narrative light on what is probably the darkest chapter in German colonial history: the only recently formally recognized genocide against the Ovaherero and Nama in today’s Namibia.

MEASURES OF MEN features Leonard Scheicher (“The Silent Revolution”, “Das Boot”, TV series) alongside Namibian actress and Herero, Girley Charlene Jazama and European Film Award winner Peter Simonischek (“Toni Erdmann”, “The Interpreter”).

SYNOPSIS

Berlin at the end of the 19th Century: Alexander Hoffmann is an ambitious PhD student of Ethnol- ogy. When a delegation of the Ovaherero and Nama tribes travels to Berlin during a ‘Colonial Exhibition’, he takes a special interest in their young female translator Kezia Kambazembi as subject for his studies. Impressed by her intellect, he begins to question the common racial theories of white supremacy, whilst the delegation fails in their attempt to negotiate for better conditions with the German Kaiser and returns to Namibia, where the political tensions are growing worse over time and culminate in the Herero Uprising and brutal retaliations of the German imperial army. In this tense atmosphere, Hoffmann eagerly joins an ethnological expedition under the army’s protection to gather scientifically ‘valuable’ artefacts, whilst trying to collect further proof for his progressive theories and to find Kezia. Hoffmann experiences the brutality of war and the massacres among the local population and slowly begins to lose his moral compass.

Lars Kraume graduated from the German Film and Television Academy Berlin (DFFB) in 1997 and since then, has worked on more than 30 feature film and TV productions as director, producer, and screenwriter. With the Berlinale premiere of “No Songs Of Love” (2005), he received the at- tention of international audiences. After directing “The Coming Days” (2009), starring August Diehl and Daniel Brühl, his international breakthrough came with “The People vs. Fritz Bauer” (2019), which received seven German Film Awards and was successfully released internationally. His TV series “Bauhaus – A New Era” (2019) about the origins of the legendary ‘Bauhaus’ movement celebrated its world premiere at Cannes Series 2019. After further works in television and theatre he returned as a feature film director with “The Silent Revolution” (2017) which premiered as a Berlinale Special Gala and became a theatrical success beyond German borders.

MEASURES OF MEN is produced by Thomas Kufus of zero one film in co-production with STUDIOCANAL and ZDF/ARTE as well as Akzente Film- & Fernsehproduktion and WunderWerk. Supported by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, Moin Filmförde- rung Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein, Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, Film- förderungsanstalt and Deutscher Filmförderfonds.

116 min. / Germany, 2022 / Color / Feature