Günter Klaucke

Based on a true incident involving a fatal riot at a Brussels football stadium, Spectators explores the behavior of crowds and the manipulation of the masses. At once ambiguous and deeply revealing, the film captures the emotional state of an audience gradually losing control.

The film is based on a scene in Beethoven’s opera Fidelio. The inmates of the Seville prison are kept in dark cells without daylight. Now, for the first time after years, they are allowed to see the sun. Light as a metaphor for freedom.

On May 3, 1945, with Hitler already dead and Hamburg and Berlin having surrendered, the Royal Air Force launched its last major air raid. The target was a collection of ships in the Bay of Kiel and Lübeck. The largest ships, the floating concentration camp transports Cap Arcone and Thielbeck, were targeted by the bombers and low-flying aircraft: this horrific mistake cost the lives of over 700 prisoners - the greatest maritime disaster of all time. The film returns to the sites of the events, to Neuengamme, where the prisoners were previously interned, to Lübeck, where they were embarked, to Neustadt, where they were crammed onto the Cap Arcona. The prehistory of the last great luxury liner is reconstructed, the launching, the voyage of the Queen of the South Atlantic, as the most important extra in the UFA production: The Sinking of the Titanic.