Brother

In 1896 Hamburg, work on the docks is hard and labour unrest is brewing. Management is deaf to demands for higher pay. The dockworkers hold meetings; the situation reaches a boiling point. With the union agreeing to lend support, they call a strike. One of the movement’s organisers is particularly hard hit. He lives in a garret in the Gängeviertel, a neighbourhood of alleyways, with his bedridden wife, elderly mother, and small daughter. On Christmas Eve, he is arrested and roughly hauled to the police station, where he faces off against his brother – a police sergeant and representative of the class enemy, whom he recently kicked out of his home. (Berlinale)