Comments

In four concise chapters, Jannis Alexander Kiefer's short film, which is also being shown at interfilm, demonstrates how quickly digital anger and hatred can turn into real violence. Based on typical online discussions, the film traces the dynamics that arise in social networks when anonymity and peer pressure lead to disinhibition. Without pointing fingers, but with keen observation, Jannis Alexander Kiefer dissects the language of the internet and its consequences in everyday life. In doing so, he combines documentary precision with a cinematic structure that creates both distance and emotion. The short film COMMENTS was produced in 2018 at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF and won the Short Tiger Award from German Films and the FFA in the same year. The film was screened at more than sixty international festivals and was presented at Interfilm Berlin and the Kontrast Filmfest Bayreuth, among others. The press, including the Badische Zeitung and Testkammer, praised its clear dramaturgy and its courage in addressing the responsibility of each individual in the digital public sphere. With a reduced style and haunting consistency, Kiefer has created a work that impressively reveals the mechanisms of hatred, imitation, and social blindness.