The police: an intangible, omnipresent ghostly phenomenon in the life of civilized states
It all starts with the construction of the enemy. How liberal democracies use this is described by Achille Mbembe in his book “Politics of Enmity” (2017). In the documentary film “We are so free”, a quote from Mbembe is shown as a visual element behind a line of people, which can be interpreted as a line of refugees thanks to a person wearing a Red Cross vest in the foreground. The enemy overwrites the division of society into classes with its apparent unity, it says.
Indirectly, this raises the question of whether it is the enemy label that connects refugee activists, trade union youth, striking delivery drivers, Amazon employees and labor lawyers in Germany. The fight for a better society is clearly the determining issue for all the people who have their say in the film. The resulting opposition to the state, also declared unilaterally by the state, is also clearly evident.
The filmmakers Christian Lehmann-Feddersen and Alf Schreiber approach their protagonists very sensitively and carefully at the beginning. As the film progresses, however, some of the characters disappear almost completely behind their actions, but always remain part of the movement, even if sometimes without their own story or face. Their voices can be heard throughout the film, as the viewer is led to various family tables, children’s rooms and shared kitchens, courthouses and nuclear waste dumps. Sometimes the camera just runs in the background and captures statements from activists who report on experiences in their everyday struggles. The individual fates blur into a kind of mass of experience that can seem difficult to understand or overwhelming for viewers without prior knowledge.
First there is Julia, who tells how she entered working life as a young woman. She learned what it means to work for little pay. She earned 7.20 euros an hour at a greengrocer’s. During her training as a nurse she learned what a difference the support of a union can make. Before that she had already organized for climate protection with friends from the union youth group, she says, gives her child a few kisses on the cheek and dresses him in thicker clothes for rainy weather. Julia is out and about on the streets of Bonn, demonstrating. We don’t find out exactly what she is protesting for or against, just a few Fridays for Future flags can be seen.
Loïc begins by talking about his three siblings. His parents are teachers, he says, and his little sister works as a social worker. With refugees and people without papers. Now, kneeling on the ground in a greenhouse in the French region of Grand Est, his hands weeding, he talks about collective life in the countryside. About the Bure nuclear waste dump, for example, which is planned right next to the farm behind the hill. Birds chirp loudly as Loïc strolls across the fields. He explains that the ground there in Mandres-en-Barrois, which has lots of stones on it, already has everything in place to deal with the police – should they attack.
Julia and Loïc have experienced what it means when the police attack. What they have in common is their experience of the G20 summit in Hamburg in 2017. Julia was there when her demonstration was brutally beaten up by a police squad on Hamburg’s Rondenbarg. Loïc experienced an international manhunt by the police, later being taken into custody and receiving draconian punishment. Both experienced masked police officers storming their parents’ houses and apartments, breaking down doors and putting the family under pressure. They talk of officers who cannot understand why a neighbor asks Loïc at the moment of arrest if he can bring him a glass of water, or how they sit on Julia’s bed, rummaging through her underwear and wanting her to pity them.
“What kind of constitutional state do I actually live in?” asks Julia’s father, who has been noticeably shaken by the experience of state repression. He is still stunned that the investigators pestered him by saying that he would visit Julia’s training place so that he would tell them where she lived. When he then did so, intimidated, they drove to his daughter’s company anyway. Julia, Loïc and their families have learned what repression means. They have learned that the state, which claims to respect and guarantee their civil rights, arbitrarily chooses whether, when and how it does so.
“We are so free” shows experiences with a state that isolates itself, that puts up walls and fences and, under certain circumstances, makes life dangerous for people. So it is hardly surprising that the face of a Hamburg activist is blurred in the picture, as is that of her child. We do not learn her name either. She and her group cook for people in refugee accommodation, distribute food there, donate clothes and toys. The refugees live in accommodation in the Hamburg district of Rahlstedt, isolated from city life.
The film assumes a lot of information. It is not explained in detail that Loïc was in custody for more than 16 months and was sentenced to three years in prison for attending an unannounced demonstration during the G20 summit. “We are so free” also throws the viewer into many other situations without it being immediately clear what they are about in detail: the struggles of Amazon employees, a court case against fired drivers from the delivery start-up Gorillas, the annual demonstration in memory of Oury Jalloh, who was murdered in police custody in 2005. The scenes and locations follow one another almost without commentary, occasionally interrupted by intercut still images with caricatures.
The critical former Verdi department head Orhan Akman, who was fired under scandalous circumstances, also has his say, as do the defenders of victims of police violence, who were able to win a court case spectacularly in favor of their clients. They explain how difficult it is to even exercise this right, which is actually formally guaranteed, in this country. Ultimately, it is precisely the diversity of voices in “We are so free” that creates a connection between the individual speakers and their stories.
