A German film by a relatively unknown director was denied clearance by the German film classification body for screening in cinemas or on television. Now, thanks to Elon Musk, the whole world knows about it. For two days, Citizen Vigilante was available to watch for free on X. Afterward, it immediately climbed to No. 2 among the most-watched films on Apple TV, even overtaking the successful Michael Jackson documentary. On Sunday, the film reached No. 1 on Amazon.
The attempt by a German regulatory body to obstruct the distribution of an unwelcome film and keep it from a wider audience can safely be described as a failure.
That is, in principle, the best news in this debate because it shows three things at once.
The censorship ambitions of European states are unenforceable, people will find ways around them and figures such as Elon Musk, together with his platform X, are worth their weight in gold.
Second, the case reveals a total failure on the part of the German state in media literacy and in its understanding of how social media works. This is the same social media that Germany is now so desperately trying to ban, at least for those under 16 and initially under the pretext of protecting minors. German authorities still do not understand the dynamics of the internet. What they try to suppress becomes a box-office hit online. The much-cited Streisand effect has struck again, maximizing precisely the attention they wanted to prevent.
And third, the film’s subject, migrant violence, has found an audience that is no longer willing to be intimidated.
Predictable Plot, Explosive Subject
The story is quickly told. The film itself is fairly third-rate, with a simple and predictable plot and a contrived, implausible hero. Its only explosive element is its subject: a man who has the will, the weapons and the financial means begins, after the murder of his own mother, to kill migrants himself, who brought violence into the country, became perpetrators and were never justly punished.
He kills the youth gang that raped a girl and still walked free. He kills police officers who try to arrest him because, in his view, they are part of the system. He also kills judges who hand down overly lenient sentences and ensure that perpetrators are released while their victims lie seriously injured in hospitals or retreat home broken and disillusioned.
Obstructed, Not Banned
A central role in the attempt to obstruct the film’s distribution was played by the Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle der Filmwirtschaft (FSK), Germany’s voluntary film classification body. The FSK routinely reviews films and videos of all kinds on request and assigns them to the relevant age categories in order to protect minors from content deemed unsuitable for their age.
In the case of Uwe Boll’s film, the body adopted a kind of boycott stance, refusing to grant an age rating and giving the film the label “not classified”. That may sound harmless, but it has serious consequences for distribution. Films with this classification may not be made available to children or teenagers at all. Distributors and cinemas therefore generally do not include them in their programs. The result is that the film is not banned, but nobody wants to show it.
The FSK argued that the film incited violence against migrants and that the main character, Sanders, could be seen as a role model. Despite its fictional nature, the film had “a high degree of reference to reality, particularly through the themes it addresses and the mirroring of events in television news and social media, so that sufficient distancing on the part of vulnerable young people was ruled out and, instead, an absorption of the problematic aspects and messages was assumed”.
Put in less bureaucratic language: the fear is of copycats because the subject is current and close to reality, while the film itself reflects social media dynamics. In the film, the vigilante Sanders is celebrated by people around the world for his actions. “We need this guy in Germany”, “We need this guy in Canada”, countless online fanboys proclaim. Women feel protected, he receives marriage proposals online and men admire him.
Selective Outrage over Revenge
If the debate about this independent B-movie, Citizen Vigilante, were really only about the accusation that it calls for vigilantism and is therefore dangerous to young people, the same standard would have to be applied to other films too.
After all, an entire branch of Hollywood lives off the endlessly recycled plot in which a lone fighter carves a bloody path across the screen for 90 minutes to avenge those innocently taken from him, taking it upon himself to punish those who were not sentenced by the courts or not sentenced harshly enough.
As a rule, the title characters in these films are celebrated as secret heroes who restore justice where the courts have failed.
If the same standards were applied to all films and vigilantism were condemned always and everywhere, blockbusters such as Quentin Tarantino’s classic Inglourious Basterds would never have made it into cinemas. John Wick, alias Keanu Reeves, murders at least 439 people over several sequels on his quest for revenge. Uma Thurman has a combined body count of 81 in Kill Bill 1 and 2.
No, it is not the dead, the copious blood or the fact that someone is taking matters into his own hands.
Director Uwe Boll has simply chosen the wrong subject. His vigilante Sanders is the wrong hero of the wrong victims and he kills the wrong perpetrators.
German television viewers are usually lulled by moralizing crime dramas in which migrants are always the victims of right-wing Nazi groups, but never the perpetrators. Vigilantism is always fine when it comes from climate activists with brightly colored hair and when the villain is a millionaire landlord shark from Munich-Bogenhausen.
Citizen Vigilante crashes into this world and exposes what many citizens have observed for years: a weak state that seems overwhelmed by rising migrant violence, yet also acts as if it refuses to face reality.
Holding Up the Mirror
“What does your country do? Nothing! And what do you do? Nothing!” These two accusations from the title character Sanders at the very beginning of the film are perhaps the clearest and simplest summary of all. They form a double charge: against the state, which remains inactive in the face of violent crime and against the many citizens who fail to act.
No wonder such a film is not supposed to exist in a country such as Germany. No wonder it is said to be dangerous. Especially now, when the public mood is already boiling over because of the grooming gang scandals in England, with tens of thousands of young women as victims of Pakistani men.
Especially now, after the murder of Henry Novak, whom the police treated as the perpetrator, while the migrant perpetrator was treated as the victim of xenophobia – a mistake the young man paid for with his life. Or after the case of Louis in France. He too was stabbed by a youth gang. He had previously asked the police for help because he was being threatened. Now he is dead.
And then German elections are approaching as well. The Alternative for Germany (AfD), which regularly denounces such crimes and conditions, is already on course for success in light of police statistics documenting precisely this rise in violence against locals. Germany, too, already has enough gang rapes and murdered children. The last thing it needs, from this perspective, is a call to vigilantism.
Had Saxony-Anhalt’s domestic intelligence agency not recently argued in a report that remembering German victims murdered by migrants was an indication of hostility to the constitution? Here, 90 minutes of film remind citizens that the state cannot protect them and perhaps does not even want to.
Who Delivers Justice?
“Do you want justice?” Sanders asks a woman in the film as she lies seriously injured in hospital after a violent crime. He then explains what awaits her if she tries to have the perpetrators locked up for life: a long and expensive trial in which she must repeatedly recount what the men did to her, be called a liar, watch lawyers search for loopholes for those men and still only hope for a just verdict.
The simple scenes land emotionally at once. Everyone knows the cases of lenient courts and soft sentences. The film itself recalls a concrete case in Hamburg that director Boll takes up here. A 16-year-old girl became the victim of a gang rape. The perpetrators walked free. Justice?
The entire explosive force of the film lies in its reminder of the state’s failure to protect its citizens and impose just punishments. The attempt at censorship, by contrast, exposes the state’s corresponding fear: that viewers might recognize reality all too clearly and understand the film as what it plainly also is, a call no longer to tolerate these conditions.
Should the Film Be Banned?
“The state, the police, the courts, you think they have failed. They have not. They were never made to bring you justice”, director Boll has his vigilante Sanders say in one of the confession videos he releases with a distorted voice. “I do this for you until you learn to do this for yourself.”
What else is that supposed to be, if not a call to action?
Does that mean a fictional film must or may be banned? Of course not.
Films have always taken up real events, problems and social conflicts and recast them in fictional form. Countless films tell stories of people rising up against elites and even bringing about violent overthrow. Films are fiction. They can be good, bad, moral, unethical, frightening or funny. That is what films are allowed to do. It is art and culture.
Citizen Vigilante is not even accused of being surreal and unrealistic. On the contrary, it is accused of being too close to reality. It is not the fiction that makes it dangerous, but the reflection of reality.
Yet when showing reality threatens to end in censorship, the issue has long ceased to be film art. It is about power and politics. Modern book-burning no longer needs flames. It can simply make unwelcome films disappear. The reaction of citizens could prove harsher than a Streisand effect.