THE DEATH OF ARES

The essayistic documentary reflects upon war in the director’s own personal history: Peter Heller, who spent his childhood on both sides of the Iron Curtain, presents 50 years of threatening peace - before and after the Cold War. Involved in the 1980s peace movement, the movie maker shamefully recalls his adolescent enthusiasm for potent guns, missiles and tanks. The disarmament in the early 1990s triggers hopes and Heller sets out to verify the „death of the war god“. On his rather discouraging and paradoxical journey he meets a young woman, who learned shooting for the sake of love and who has turned into a „gun-fiend“, an old friend, who at the age of 50 still toys around with his model jet fighters, and also a softspoken scientist, who develops monstrous weapons for future wars.

Conflicts, Cold War, History, Politics, War & Peace