Victoria o Muerte – The Life and Death of Monika Ertl

Is there such a thing as just tyrannicide? A justifiable armed resistance? When does a civilian voluntarily take up arms in the face of fascism and dictatorship? Monika Ertl was born in 1937 as the daughter of Riefenstahl cameraman Hans Ertl and joined Che Guevara's Bolivian "National Liberation Army" at the end of the 1960s. Shortly after, she shoots the officer who had previously executed Guevara and his successor. The assassination takes place at the Bolivian consulate in Hamburg. She then attempts to kidnap Klaus Barbie, a Nazi war criminal working in the Bolivian military, until he has her tracked down in La Paz in 1973 and shot at the age of 35. Ten years later, the Nazi hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld and the philosopher Regis Debray succeed in having Klaus Barbie extradited to France. The biographical essay film uses archive images, new footage from witnesses and a voice-over with political writings of the time, to create a new perspective on Monika Ertl's extraordinary life.