Curveball
Curveball
Curveball
Curveball
Curveball
Curveball
Curveball

Curveball

Length
108 min
Director
Johannes Naber
Release
2020
Cast

Sebastian Blomberg, Franziska Brandmeier, Jeff Burrell, Marcus Calvin, Mike Davies, Simon Kerrison, Virginia Kull, Thorsten Merten, Dar Salim, Michael Wittenborn

Curveball is the code name for an intelligence operation linked to an Iraqi refugee, Rafid Alwan, who sought asylum in Germany in 1999. During interrogations, he claims to be a chemical engineer and, in exchange for being granted citizenship, offers information on biological weapons allegedly in Saddam Hussein's possession. The Federal Intelligence Agency immediately became interested in the mysterious stranger from the Middle East. Its associate, biologist Arndt Wolf, had recently returned from Iraq, from an intelligence mission in which he and American agents had searched for evidence of factories producing Anthrax, a deadly substance that paralyzes the respiratory system. When, at an informal meeting, engineer Alwan draws a plan on a napkin for a mobile biological weapons plant in his country, Wolf celebrates success.

Johannes Naber's film is not a documentary, but is based on a very thorough research and numerous interviews with participants and witnesses of those events. Documentary footage is interwoven into the frames of the film, which is connected to the story of this almost unbelievable story: during a meeting of the UN Security Council, American Foreign Minister Colin Powell gives a speech intended to convince the audience that Saddam Hussein is producing secret biological weapons and illustrates it with a drawing made by an Iraqi engineer. Less than a month later, the war with Iraq begins.

Screenings

© 2024 GoOut, s.r.o., Czechia