The Pannwitz Stare

This documentary deals with physically disabled people and how others respond to them. The protagonists describe in interviews their lives, their everyday experiences and challenges and what they wish for their future.

One of them calls the way others look at him "The Pannwitz Stare", which refers to the book "If This Is a Man" by Primo Levi. In this book the author describes his time in the concentration camp Auschwitz during the second world war. The task assigned to one of the physicians in Auschwitz, Doctor Pannwitz, was to select the Jews who were still able to work from the ones who were not in order to kill them. According to Levi, Pannwitz did not look at the detainees as fellow humans but as animals, as if observing fish in their aquarium.

The movie delivers an interesting and important look into a world most of us will never know. Its main objective is to provide information (like every documentary's is) and not to entertain its viewers. After some time, though, it gets a little boring, as the protagonists tell similar stories. Nevertheless, it is an important movie with an important topic.