THE INHERITORS

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.”