Moral Dilemmas: Lessons from Literature

What goes on in the mind of a murderer? And how does a sensitive young man become a killer? Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote the first profiling novel in history with his classic “Crime and Punishment.” He describes the increasing radicalization of a frustrated young man: Rodion Raskolnikov. With this story, set in 19th-century St. Petersburg, Dostoevsky proves himself to be a visionary. Long before Sigmund Freud, he delves deep into the soul of his protagonist and describes precisely what drives him to murder. The novel is timeless. The film embeds this classic of literary history in current events and shows that Crime and Punishment is a highly contemporary study of violence, radical ideologies, and moral self-empowerment.

In her novel “Happening,” Nobel Prize-winning author Annie Ernaux tells the story of her own existential dilemma: as a student in 1963, she becomes pregnant unintentionally. At that time, having a child as an unmarried woman meant giving up education and social advancement. Abortion, on the other hand, was illegal and therefore life-threatening. As a young woman, Annie Ernaux's protagonist, like the writer herself at the time, is faced with the decision of either giving up her desire for a self-determined life or risking imprisonment—and even her life—for having an illegal abortion. The film embeds the novel and Ernaux's personal story in the events of the 1960s and 1970s in France and Germany. It is a decades-long struggle for the liberalization of abortion and for women's rights. The novel shows that its theme is still shockingly relevant today.