Remaining Risk

A Film about People under Hospital Treatment Order

BR, 2012, 90 minutes

Security and therapy are the ultimate objective of involuntary commitment of criminal offenders under hospital treatment order. In contrast to a correctional facility, involuntary commitment is always indefinite in forensic psychiatry. There are patients who must spend the rest of their lives here.

Never before has a film team been able to spend weeks in a hospital treatment order institution in order to observe and document the “everyday life” there. Katrin Bühlig managed to win the trust of medical director Dr Nahlah Saimeh as well as the patients at the LWL Centre for Forensic Psychiatry in Eickelborn and to delve into a world that is alien to us. People with whom we do not want to have anything to do with live there. But at second glance, they are people who do not appear abnormal, evil or compulsive. On the contrary, they are exceptionally polite and extremely obliging. And yet they are dangerous, sometimes above-average intelligent and extremely manipulative. Like Mr F., who rigs up his own truth so that he does not have to deal with reality. Under hospital treatment order, he is compelled to do so. A necessity for therapy exists here. Mr S. also has to grapple with his deed, rape and murder, here.

The film is no light fare. Discussions with mentally ill criminals take centre stage. Persistently in search of explanations, the filmmaker also asks unpleasant questions. While doing so, in the course of 90 minutes, she unveils the entire spectrum of human chasms – without voyeurism and without condemnation, but also without forgetting the victims.