Year: 1983
Country:
Austria
Run Time:
89 minutes
In 1979, Viennese director Walter Bannert wrote, produced and directed "What Price Victory?", his first feature, after a decade of producing award-winning documentaries and TV programs as well as developing screenplays. That same year Bannert was among a group of Vienna cafe patrons beaten up by a gang of young neo-Nazis who wrecked the place. Researching the burgeoning movement in W. Germany and Austria for 3 years, Bannert infiltrated their private meetings by convincing party leaders that he wanted to make an objective documentary. THE INHERITORS is a disturbing and timely, fictional drama based entirely on real characters and events Bannert discovered in the neo-Nazi camps. Filmed in Austria, THE INHERITORS was shown on the state-run TV there but neo-Nazi threats against theaters attempting to show the film in W. Germany limited exhibition to only 1/4 the expected audience. The film centers on Tom and Charly, restless teenagers who join a "youth club," seduced by available sex and learning revisionist history, denying the holocaust. Nazi rhetoric and para-military training combine to create ideal inheritors of Hitler's goals. If the film's message seems alarmist, the ever-growing neo-Nazi European, Canadian and U.S. groups influencing today's youth cannot be ignored, according to frequent reports of their recent activities in the news; a warning against this danger is the film's "raison d'etre."
Screenplay
Walter Bannert, Erich A. Richter
Producer
Walter Bannert
Cinematography
Hanus Polak
Editing
Walter Bannert
Principal Cast
Nikolas Vogel, Roger Schauer, Wolfgang Gasser, Gabriele Bolen
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