On Their Knees Before Power: Violence and Silence in Marter

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Marter, Christian Alsan (Alemania, 2025)

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Badria is on her knees. Her hands, marked by earth and dried blood, reveal a body already pierced by violence. The space around her is hostile: stone, shadows, accusatory gazes that weigh heavier than any chain. With this first gesture of dispossession begins Marter (Germany, 2025), a short film directed by Christian Alsan, set in seventeenth century Europe and centered on Badria, a young woman accused of abducting the newborn son of a princess.

From its opening shots, Marter draws attention to the way it establishes its world through a restrained, almost ritual rhythm. Alsan proposes a slow immersion into a dark, oppressive atmosphere, shaped by fear of power as a daily norm. Silence functions here as a language more precise than words, speeches, or unnecessary explanations. It is within this sustained climate that the atrocious erupts.

In Marter, we are compelled to witness in full detail how violence ceases to be merely a procedural concept and becomes a force exercised upon the body. Alsan films bodies with unsettling proximity, allowing the violence of power to unfold in the foreground and positioning us as involuntary witnesses to inquisitorial horror. The Inquisition appears as a relentless masculine apparatus, upheld by convenience and by self serving interpretations of events. Yet the film also engages with the history of the persecution of women from a perspective that acknowledges the contradictions of power and of those who confront it. The women in the film are astute characters, capable of reading the rules of power and acting within its fissures.

On a symbolic level, the film evokes the Middle Ages as a territory where faith and politics are indistinguishable, and where the female body becomes a battleground. There is something profoundly contemporary in the way Marter exposes systems that require culprits to sustain their order, and subjects who learn to navigate that violence without becoming heroes.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marter_shortfilm

Website: https://www.marter-shortfilm.de/ 

Ciclos Shorts Fest

2026

Christian Alsan is a Berlin-based filmmaker whose work bridges the gap between high-profile music videos and independent genre cinema. Known for his dark aesthetics and ECHO Award-winning visual style, he creates atmospheric narratives with a sharp psychological edge. His latest projects mark a bold move into period drama and thriller