Alice Schwarzer wouldn’t be Alice Schwarzer if she didn’t use the premiere of a film about Alice Schwarzer to convey an Alice Schwarzer theme. The magazine founded by the 79-year-old published at the end of April Emma an open letter in which Schwarzer and 27 other intellectuals warned Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) against the delivery of heavy weapons to Ukraine. 250,000 people have now joined it.
In the film biography “Alice Schwarzer”, which the Austrian director and producer Sabine Derflinger presented on Saturday at the documentary film festival in Munich in the presence of the protagonist, this plays no role. The 135 minutes worth seeing revolve around Schwarzer’s fight for women’s rights and how she shaped it. In the debriefing with the audience, however, the publicist made it clear: “Wherever these wars have taken place in the last few decades, sometimes in the name of human rights or even women’s rights, only scorched earth has remained, so that for me it was a matter of course and imperative to kickstart this initiative.”
The trigger for this was that she had perceived a “huge gap between public and published opinion” that the 50 percent of Germans who spoke out against deliveries of heavy weapons to Ukraine had not appeared in the media. “That was the motive for us to raise a different voice.”
She is quite satisfied with the response. “For me, an incredible amount has already been achieved,” said Schwarzer, referring to the many contributions on the subject: “This important debate about life and death is now taking place in Germany. Bravo!”
On the cinema stage, she concluded forgivingly: “I find it a tolerable controversy because I assume that everyone involved ultimately wants the right thing, just draw different conclusions – and we have to talk about that.” But Alice Schwarzer would not be Alice Schwarzer if she had missed such a good opportunity to further the debate.
She then dictated a few more sentences to the German Press Agency, which she could be sure would be heard beyond Munich. She would like to see more moderate tones from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. “I regret that Zelenskij does not stop provoking.” If Olaf Scholz accepted Zelenskiy’s invitation and traveled to Kyiv on May 9, it would be an “unparalleled provocation”. On the day, Russia celebrates the victory over Nazi Germany. “I would also like to see a bit more nuanced tones from Ukraine,” said Schwarzer, but emphasized that if you find the president’s policies “partially questionable”, that doesn’t mean that you don’t feel for the country – “very much in the Opposite”.