The Canadian film director Jo-Anne Velin presents her new documentary Bild des Tages across Germany, one night only per location, in 27 CineStar multiplex Cinemas. The German-Canadian film is a moving and unusually intimate portrait of the so-called Silent Majority in Germany in an iconic location throughout October and November 2018. Velin shot the film in a part of the country that was attacked by arsonists during spring 2015. The remains, captured in a roof’s image made by a Deutsche Press Agentur photographer, literally traveled around the world. For about a year, it was exactly this roof that became the international and national icon of a big wave of new far right violence across the country. Velin spent 100 days over the course of 17 months in the region where the arson occurred, to draw out people who had completely disappeared from public discourse it seemed. 11 months after the arson attack, an election in the state of Sachsen-Anhalt brought the leader of the AfD into the State parliament; he received his direct mandate, coincidentally, in exactly the same electoral riding where the arson occurded. This is the only documentary film in Germany explicitly about the silent ones. It is steered by the director’s Canadian perspective and reflexes. It is not a film that fits simplistic categorisations, but every image and sound is authentic. Bild des Tages / The Picture of the Day premiered at Dok Leipzig international film festival, it has been shown in the region where I shot it, and Cinestar agreed to tour it through their (outstandingly equipped) cinemas across Germany.
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