Lost honour of Katharina Blum = Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum

Katharina Blum (Angela Winkler) spends the night with Ludwig Goetten (Jurgen Prochnow), a new acquaintance who is, unknown to her, under police surveillance. This one night stand has serious repercussions for Katharina who is brought in for police questioning. Her basic civil rights ignored at every turn, Katharina is relentlessly grilled about her relationship with her one-night stand. As a result she loses her job, her friends, and her standing in the community. Unsatisfied with this, the police go after Katharina’s family. Her story is also exploited by the ‘yellow press’, which hounds her and depicts her as everything from loose woman to communist moll. And so, through the mirror of a manipulative press, Katharina becomes the most hated woman in Germany. The film achieves a compelling portrait of Germany in the mid-seventies (the lead years), during which the fight against the Red Army Faction led a number of State agencies to use any means possible to fight terrorism, while a manipulative right wing press sent an entire country in a frenzy over the breakdown of law and order. This originally made for TV production is adapted from the novel by Heinrich Boll (itself based on actual events). In German with English subtitles.