Jewish Revenge on the German Screen

Post-Holocaust German cinema is rife with the figure of the Jewish victim and accompanying portrayals of Jewish German and non-Jewish German reconciliation. Instrumental in this tradition, heritage filmmaking of the 1990s manufactured undemanding and sentimental historical tales for a mass audience. More recently, a crop of new films does something radically different. This essay tracks Jewish revenge plots in contemporary German film. Films such as Ende der Schonzeit (Closed Season, dir. Franziska Schlotterer, 2012), Winterjagd (Winter Hunt, dir. Astrid Schult, 2017), Masel Tov Cocktail (dir. Arkadij Khaet and Mickey Paatzsch, 2020), and Plan A—Was würdest du tun? (Plan A—What Would You Do?, dir. Yoav Paz and Doron Paz, 2021) challenge what has come before. In pursuit of different historical narratives, they embrace the Jewish revenge fantasy and hail the diverse possibilities of new Jewish positions. Finally, partaking of a shift in memory culture toward anger, resistance, and self-empowerment advanced by the author and curator Max Czollek, among others, these films usher in a new era for culture and cinema alike.