Schirman succeeds in capturing the difference between the bare facts of former terrorist Magdalena Kopp’s life (founding member of the Frankfurt-based Revolutionary Cells, involvement in the 1976 Entebbe hijacking, marriage to the world’s ‘most-wanted’ terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez aka Carlos the Jackal, retirement from politics) and her current life as a mother and troubled, quietly thoughtful older woman in this strangely captivating documentary – in which silence and violence co-exist as witnesses to a now distant form of urban revolt.
In the Dark Room | Directed by Nadav Schirman (Germany, Finland, Israel 2013) with Magdalena Kopp. Starts September 26
Originally published in issue #119, September 2013.