The documentary “Beyond Revenge” that premiered on the 2nd of October in Berlin, and which has already been premiered in several other cities worldwide, is now freely available on youtube, just as the producers, Álvaro Orus and Luz Jahnen said it would be. It is subtitled in three languages, Spanish, English and German. Soon Italian, Greek, French and Portugese will be added.
The movie is about the mechanism of revenge that is deeply rooted in human beings and which the producers of the film trace back to the prehistoric past of humankind. In the first big states of Mesopotamia this mechanism was institutionalised in the form of law and punishment and executed by state authorities whose successors we still find today in the handling of compensation for injustice. According to the film, enshrining revenge into law led to the loss of an inner process of reconciliation and nowadays we have no tools for achieving a real inner reconciliation after harm has been done to us. We yearn for punishment but that cannot heal the inner break that has happened to us. In the documentary, several very different people tell us about their very personal process of reconciling with violence, sometimes after decades of suffering from the consequences of resentment, fears and bitterness. Impressively they describe the liberation, the growth of energy and happiness through reconciliation that cannot be explained by mere foregiveness but with a deep inner understanding.
The first reactions to the film, according to Luz Jahnen, co-producer and author of the study that was the basis for the documentary, were “gratitude”: “Gratitude that this topic was presented in such a way that they could confront their own experiences more clearly.” Many had also expressed the wish to show this film to others because they considered it as new and important for this topic.
“Beyond revenge” was, as the producers jokingly said, not a “Low-Budget” film, but a “No-Budget” film, that was created by a huge number of people giving their support. And now it is available for everyone in the world for free on youtube.
