In Retrospect – Films – Visions du Réel

Rückblickend betrachtet

Daniel Asadi Faezi & Mila Zhluktenko
Germany | 2025 | 14 min
International Premiere
Language : German
Subtitles : English, French

Immigrant workers build a shopping mall for the upcoming 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. In 2016, nine people with migrant backgrounds are killed in a racist attack at the same mall. A woman the film Addressee Unknown (1983) asks: “Why such hatred?”. By interweaving three periods of history, In Retrospect powerfully reveals the forces of hatred at work.

In 1972, Munich inaugurated the “Olympia Shopping Mall”, built by "Gastarbeiter", migrant workers “invited” on a temporary basis, coming primarily from Italy, Yugoslavia, and Turkey. In 2016, in that very same shopping centre, a man driven by racist motives murdered nine people of immigrant descent. Their families faced an uphill battle to have the attack recognised for what it was: an act of far-right terrorism. Between these two events, in 1982, Iranian filmmaker Sohrab Shahid Saless released Addressee Unknown, a film about a German woman who leaves her husband for an unemployed architect of Turkish origin. Among its many questions, one echoes resoundingly: “Why so much hatred?”

Drawing on a rich archive of material, filmmakers Mila Zhluktenko and Daniel Asadi Faezi (Aralkum, Best Short Film, VdR 2022; Waking Up in Silence, VdR 2023) bring these two real-life events into dialogue with a work of fiction. Through deft, understated editing, In Retrospect explores the persistent dynamics of hate across time, never losing sight of what images can and cannot say. A study of our present, framed through the enduring lens of history.

Mourad-Anis Moussa

In Retrospect, 2025
Waking up in Silence, 2023
Aralkum, 2022