Film release: October 8, 2021
CURVEBALL – WE MAKE THE TRUTH
Germany / 2020
Directed by: Johannes Naber
Mit: Sebastian Blomberg, Dar Salim, Virginia Kull u.a.
We know (what does know? We probably don’t know anything) the world of the secret services from literature (John le Carré and Co) and from the cinema. But what’s really going on? Quite a lackluster affair, sure. And, what one never suspected to this extent, a hack of the bureaucracy, which always needs a scapegoat when something goes wrong – and as always, the powerful clean themselves off and throw the undercuts into the orcus.
The director tells a true story in this context Johannes Naber (who has already delivered a high-ranking psycho-political story with “The Time of the Cannibals”). At the end of the millennium there were many scientists and experts – including the German bioweapons expert Dr. Wolf (one that gets more and more hectic in the course of the plot Sebastian Blomberg): – in Iraq to control the arsenal. Which of course (the government of Saddam Hussein was tricky) was not so easy. In any case, Wolf was convinced that bad things could be expected from Iraq in this regard (the Kurds suffered a poison gas attack and were able to sing a song about it).
Wolf was then shared in Germany with the asylum seeker Rafid Alwan, alias ‘Curveball’ (Dar Salim), who posed as an insider on Saddam’s biochemistry program. And Wolf was of course exactly the man whose detailed stories about mobile poison gas generation and distribution were to be believed. To add some private confusion to the story, a CIA agent (Virginia Kull), Ex-girlfriend from Wolf’s time in Iraq, played a role, because the Americans were very interested – without wanting to get involved in this “German” case themselves.
Such information, which the refugee Iraqi only disclosed in exchange for a German passport (and acceptance into the social system), was even more useful for all those at the leading German control centers who wanted to support the US pretext for war … And history is getting more and more confused , interests get tangled up to the point of obscurity.
To make a long story short – Rafid Alwan had simply lied with his information, which could hardly be verified, in order to trick himself into obtaining German asylum. But what nobody could admit – and the film not only shows the confused Dr. Wolf, but also loads of unscrupulous secret service people and politicians who couldn’t use the truth. When the bomb burst, Wolf offered himself as the “guilty party” who would have misjudged everything.
You can give away the final punch, because it is historical – Wolf lost his job, Rafid Alwan (or whatever his name was in real life) enjoyed or still enjoys German citizenship with all its privileges … (“I lost my job and you got your passport! ”Wolf responds in disbelief.) In the end, the Iraqi admitted that he had no idea about biological weapons and that he had simply screwed the entire German secret service and political scene.
It’s a great story that always seems funny, but actually terrible, but it also shows how difficult it is to distinguish between true and false in a world of persistent and targeted misinformation. And the argument that one could only murder hundreds of thousands in one fell swoop with a spray bottle filled with bio-poison (for example anthrax) – isn’t that unbelievable?
Bottom line: Sometimes reality is even crazier than any suspense-oriented script.
Renate Wagner
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