A carnival celebration masks Germany's first far-right political murder since WWII — and the system that slept.
On June 1st, 2019, around 11:30pm, the shoot which represents a turning point in the federal republic falls. In the hessian small town Wolfhagen-Istha, the district president of Kassel, Walter Lübcke, is murdered during this night, while, just a few meters away, the annual carnival is putting the locals into a festive mood. It is DNA-evidence on the clothes of Walter Lübcke which leads the investigators on June 15th, 2019, to his presumptive murderer: Stephan Ernst. The previously convicted right-wing extremist Ernst gets arrested by a SEK unit in Kassel. A first background check reveals: Stephan Ernst was known to the security authorities, but they did not have him on their radar for six years. Now he is back. And a person is dead. The docu-drama “Schuss in der Nacht” („Shoot in the dark“) tells emotionally, and simultaneously factually, how the deadly attack on Lübcke came to be. It tells about the first far-right motivated murder of a politician since the era of national socialism.
Acting
Joachim Król's exhausted investigator anchors every scene
Direction
Ley juxtaposes carnival noise with methodical horror
Editing
Seamless blend of archive footage and reconstruction
Director
Raymond Ley
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Lübcke's 2015 pro-refugee stance made him a target in Chemnitz-protest chatter years before his death.
Director Raymond Ley previously documented neo-Nazi NSU trial; this continues his excavation of institutional blind spots.
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