Bomb City (4 Stars)

This is the 24th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

When she presented the film to the audience Ellena practically apologised for showing a true crime story in a festival that's all about fantasy. Did she forget that another true story, "American Animals", was shown on Friday? We shouldn't get too hung up on the name of the festival. This was a good film to show as a contrast to the other films in the festival.

This film tells the true story of the events that led up to the murder of Brian Deneke in 1997. It's the story of the persecution of a minority. It's difficult to understand why distributors didn't want to release the film. I would have thought it's a very relevant topic for today. Maybe it's because the victims weren't black. It's easy to say that black lives matter, but "White Lives Matter" doesn't sound as catchy.

It's the same sort of story, whatever the skin colour. The normal kids in the city of Amarillo, Texas didn't like the punks because they looked different. The all-white, all-normal jury found Dustin Camp not guilty, even though he deliberately ran Brian Deneke over and dragged his body across the parking lot. The defence lawyer defended him by saying that Brian was a vicious individual who deserved to die, so Dustin had done the right thing. The jury looked at the photos of a man with spiky hair and agreed with him. "Disgusting! We don't want anyone like that in our city!"

It's human nature to feel wary of people who look different, whether it's skin colour or clothing. I accept that. What I don't accept is people leaving it at that. First impressions might be right, they might be wrong. If I meet someone else who looks or dresses differently to me I should talk to them and find out what he's like. It doesn't matter what a person looks like on the outside, it's what he's like on the inside that matters.

That's something the good, decent jurors of Amarillo didn't understand. They were the worst type of bigots.