Hansjörg Schertenleib

Two worlds, one railway embankment, the meeting point of the lonely teenagers Block, Ferse, Watte and the girl Palme. In contrast, the family: father, son, daughter, boyfriend. In the background, barely discernible, the home for asylum seekers. Block, Ferse, Watte and Palme are close to the neo-Nazis. Xenophobes. Aggressive to anyone who they think gets too close to them. They form a group with Block as their leader. Their attacks against the foreigners, which are at first only verbal, culminate in a brutal assault on the home for asylum seekers, which is where the daughter works. There are deaths, and the daughter has to lead her life as a cripple in a wheelchair. But the perpetrators are acquitted. The family swears revenge, and the three men manage to take control of Palme: they want to force her to confess – this, too, with the most brutal means. Betrayed by his friends, Watte, the outsider of the group who is in love with Palme, stages an attempt to free the girl. He enters the family’s house. When the father, brother and boyfriend appear, there is a scuffle over Watte’s hand grenade. The picture freezes, Watte pulls out the hand grenade and holds it straight up in the air.
Hansjörg Schertenleib’s Rabenland describes the situation without denouncing the characters. They know little about one another, and when they meet it leads directly to confrontation. Schertenleib shows not only the aggression of four youths, but also people’s willingness to take the law into their own hands when they feel betrayed by it.