PROSECUTION
[STAATSSCHUTZ]
Following his lyrical award-winning debut NO HARD FEELINGS, German-Iranian filmmaker Faraz Shariat returns to the realm of radically queer and post-migrant cinema with this propulsive, gritty procedural. In a modest East German neighborhood, German-Korean state prosecutor Seyo Kim (newcomer Chen Emilie Yan in a star-making turn) is serving her workplace probation period and is eager to prove herself. Her ambition soon gives way to frustration at the German judicial system, which ostensibly prides itself in neutrality and objectivity, when her department reflects a low success rate of hate-crime prosecutions, while her day-to-day duties include defending right-wing extremists who brazenly show off their neo-Nazi insignias. When Seyo herself becomes the target of a racist attack with a Molotov cocktail, her rogue investigation draws her into the ever-growing malevolent web of underground far-right extremist networks, challenging both her belief in the legal system and her personal integrity. Outfitted with a slick, jet-black Dodge Challenger, Chen embodies a vigilante heroine with a magnetic, relentless drive and defiance that heralds the arrival of a new feminist icon. Rejecting conventions of the polemic, with an atmospheric score by Icelandic pianist Gabríel Ólafs, Shariat composes a genre-defying, high-octane procedural thriller that is at once keenly political and deliciously entertaining in its sleek, immersive handling of tone. Recipient of the Panorama Audience Award at this year’s Berlinale, PROSECUTION is a furious, unapologetic indictment of Germany’s concession to neo-fascism and the complicity of centrist ideology in the face of a disturbing rise in far-right movements. (Note courtesy of Anna Li, AFI FEST.)
Official Selection, 2026 AFI FEST and Berlin film festivals. DIR/PROD Faraz Shariat; SCR Claudia Schaefer; PROD Jorgo Narjes, Paulina Lorenz. Germany, 2026, color, 113 min. In German and Korean with English subtitles. NOT RATED
Run Time: 113 Minutes
Opening Date: Sunday, December 13, 2026
Genre: Thriller
