Naomi's Journey

Naomi, 20, lives a simple life with her younger siblings in Peru. Only the big sister lives the apparent happiness, married in Germany. But then she is dead, murdered by her German husband. Naomi is stunned. Accompanying her mother to Germany, the country of the crime, is the last thing she can imagine. And then she does it anyway and takes part in the trial in Berlin as a joint plaintiff. In the course of the trial, Naomi realizes that she knows nothing about her older sister's life. All the previous countless, amusing Skype conversations - Mariella said nothing about her problems. Only hesitantly, in the cold rhythm of a criminal trial, a married life becomes recognizable that led to her brutal murder. Naomi's hardening face reflects the violence of the act, but also of the circumstances in which it was possible. This, then, is the reality behind sex tourism and the "marriage market" for South American women and the claim of ownership by a German husband who believes he has given his Peruvian wife a better life with her residence permit. In "Naomi's Journey," the criminal trial directs a drama that cannot or will not penetrate to the crime and its motives. The film shows meticulously how the lack of consideration of the individual as well as social racism of male normality, which underlies the crime, does not enable neutral fact-finding, as the court wants to believe, but structurally makes it impossible. The viewers are thus forced to make up their own minds: however many "base motives" the "defendant" may have had towards the "injured party," that is not decisive: it is the political failure of the judicial apparatus to try the crime of racism.