German director Uwe Boll’s latest film about a man who turns to vigilantism after becoming frustrated by rising street crime has been effectively barred from release in Germany. According to Boll, the ban is linked to the film’s portrayal of migrants as perpetrators of serious crimes.
Citizen Vigilante, starring former Hollywood actor Armie Hammer, has been in effect barred from release in Germany after the country’s film classification board refused to grant it any age rating.
The action thriller, due to debut in North America on June 19, stars Hammer as Sanders, a man whose violent campaign against criminals transforms him into a social media sensation.
Germany’s film ratings authority, the FSK, declined to award the film either an adults-only classification or a ‘No Youth Clearance’ designation. Without a rating, the film cannot be distributed through cinemas, television broadcasters, streaming services, or major retailers in Germany.
Boll has condemned the decision as politically motivated. He argues that the film’s level of violence is comparable to mainstream action franchises such as John Wick and The Equalizer, both of which were released in Germany without similar restrictions.
The director claims the FSK is using youth protection rules as a pretext to suppress a film that deals with migration-related crime.
Writing in the conservative publication Tichys Einblick last month, Boll argued that the board objected to the film’s portrayal of migrant offenders and its depiction of a vigilante figure who becomes both a wanted criminal and a public hero.
According to Boll, Citizen Vigilante was inspired in part by real criminal cases in Germany. He has described the film as a fictional work intended to confront security challenges in Europe.
The director further said that the decision to ban the film reflects a tendency within German institutions to marginalise views that challenge mainstream political narratives on migration.
According to Boll,
The mass rapists in the film are young migrants, which is unfortunately particularly common according to crime statistics.
Uwe Boll’s claims are not unfounded: as we recently reported, foreigners are significantly overrepresented among perpetrators of violent crimes in Germany, with murder, rape, and knife crime cases all increasing last year.
This is the result of a lax migration policy that has allowed millions of migrants from Africa and Asia to enter Germany freely, without any strategy in place on how to integrate them.
Zoltán Kottász is a journalist for europeanconservative.com, based in Budapest. He worked for many years as a journalist and as the editor of the foreign desk at the Hungarian daily, Magyar Nemzet. He focuses primarily on European politics.
