94 tins of food, 60 packages of canned sausage, a stock of toilet paper stacked to the ceiling and several plastic boxes of instant coffee. Sabine Ban, a single young mother, is prepared – for an armed conflict with Russia or, a scenario she deems more likely, a civil war in her country. There have been weekly demonstrations in Dresden since October 2014. Calling themselves “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident”, Pegida in short, numerous people have banded together to carry their protest against the government into the street. Sabine Ban is one of those who regularly attend the rallies.

“Who protests here and what are their reasons? What do they really want?” director Sabine Michel asks at the start of the film. To find this out she followed three convinced early Pegida supporters, including a former member of the organisation team, René Jahn. With its open-minded interest in the life and mindsets of its protagonists, the film gets very close to the phenomena which often seem containable only by hackneyed phrases: angry citizens, fake media, the left-behinds, the elites.

Lukas Stern

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Nominated for Goethe-Institut Documentary Film Prize, Filmprize "Leipziger Ring"