On June 29, 1992, a farmer in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern discovers two bodies in a grain field. Investigations turn out that the dead are Romanian citizens, both Roma refugees. They got shot by hunters while trying to trespass the European border. The hunters state to have them mistaken for boars. Four years later the trial commences. Which hunter fired the deadly shots can never be proven. The sentence is one of acquittal… dpa reports: „no one from Romania was present“.
The court files show the names and addresses of Grigore Velcu and Eudache Calderar. But their families didn’t know about any trial at all. Nearly 20 years later, Philip Scheffner carries out the painstaking investigation that never took place back then. He interrogates witnesses, investigators as well as experts, and first of all the victims‘ families in Romania, whom no one ever had cared about. His diligent handling of material and reports creates a web of landscapes, recollections, case files and German political sentiment all of an increasingly oppressive complexity.
