War and Justice

The documentary explores the question of why it is so difficult to bring aggressors and their wars of aggression before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

In March 2023, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russia's President Vladimir Putin. The accusation: the abduction of Ukrainian children. With regard to the attack by Ukraine, the ICC has no case against Putin as, according to its statutes, the ICC can only investigate if the aggressor, in this case Russia, has given its consent.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas carries out a cruel massacre of Israeli civilians. Israel responds with the largest offensive on Gaza ever. The war threatens to escalate. ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan travels to the Middle East and announces that he will prosecute all kinds of war crimes on both sides.

The documentary highlights the importance of the ICC and takes a look at its origins, successes and problems. Can war crimes be prevented at all or is Ben Ferencz, former prosecutor of the Nuremberg trials, right when he says that the greatest crime is war itself?

Marcus Vetter and Michele Gentile, who already filmed at the ICC in 2009, tell the story of how the first internationally legitimized criminal court investigates war criminals in the genre of a judicial thriller. "War and Justice" is a passionate plea for peace.

⇒ Rome Statute

War and Justice features music by Bob Dylan.

"You that never done nothin' / But build to destroy / You play with my world / Like it's your little toy." When President Dwight D. Eisenhower left the White House in January 1961, he warned of the "military-industrial complex" which saw big business conspire with government to make war a profitable enterprise. Dylan's Masters Of War bluntly hits out at the war-mongers, but his prophecy went unheeded: the USA would soon send troops into conflict in Vietnam, for a bloody military struggle that lasted a decade.