Measures of Men

Alexander Hoffmann is determined to continue the legacy of his father, a pioneering ethnologist. At university, he gets caught up in the maelstrom of the evolutionist race theory of the late 19th century. Hoffmann is disgusted by the measuring of skulls, which has no other purpose than to pseudo-scientifically legitimise the superiority of the white race – but he goes along with it. He wants to find counter-evidence and seeks contact with Kezia Kambazemi, the interpreter of a delegation of Nama and Herero in Berlin who have been forced to take part in a “peoples show”. Shortly after the delegation leaves, an uprising against the German colonial power begins in what was then “German Southwest Africa”. As an ethnologist, Hoffmann becomes a member of an expedition and travels all over the country under the protection of the imperial army in search of skulls – and of Kezia. (Berlinale)