The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum

"Adapted from the Heinrich Böll novel which was in turn based on a real incident, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum has frequently been compared with Costa-Gavras’ film Z for its pace and implications as a political thriller. After sleeping with an army deserter and suspected terrorist, a domestic servant finds herself persecuted and victimized by a police investigation and subsequent press coverage which turns her past into lurid sensationalism. . . . Coming after the post-Watergate glorification of the role of the press as ‘truth-tellers’, the film unabashedly makes its target the dubious practices of the right-wing German tabloid press” (Richard Kwietniowski).