The Child I Never Was

Kai S. Pieck's film is based on the Jürgen Bartsch case. Between 1962 and 1966, when he was himself between fifteen and nineteen, Bartsch killed four boys aged between eight and thirteen in the Ruhr. The film is built almost entirely out of his own account: it does not show the events, it shows the voice describing them. That Bartsch was himself abused over a long period as a child is a documented fact and it sits at the centre of the film, but the line between an explanation and an excuse is left to the viewer throughout. Bartsch was given a life sentence in 1967, reduced in 1971 to juvenile detention. He died in 1976 during an operation he had agreed to, from an error in the anaesthesia.