Memory Wars

Hendrik Löbbert / Germany / 2025 / Czech Premiere / 91 min.

synopsis

American forensic psychologist Elizabeth Loftus is both reviled and admired as a legal expert on the unreliability of human memory. Her testimony, based on an analysis of the consistency of statements, has played a significant role in dozens of court cases where the reliability of human memory has influenced decisions on the guilt or innocence of perpetrators. As the words of testimony turn into images and images transform into memory, the witness's records become an unreliable analysis of the twists and turns of the human mind and its imagination. The documentary shows a personality torn between cultural wars and the struggle to define false memories, which are a common part of our memory and the “greatest hoax of the 21st century.”

“Let me ask you something: Ted Bundy, the Hillside Strangler, Timothy McVeigh, OJ Simpson, the Menendez Brothers, Michael Jackson, Phil Spector, Martha Stewart, Jerry Sandusky, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein. Do you actually believe that these individuals were victims of either false memories or bad identifications, your area of study? It's not my position to judge whether they are guilty or not, but there were memory issues in these cases.” — Elizabeth Loftus

biography

Hendrik Löbbert (born 1979) is a German documentary filmmaker, photographer, and video artist. He studied in Weimar and Montreal. He has worked as a director and cameraman for leading German media outlets (Die Zeit, Der Tagesspiegel, Die Welt). In 2014, he and Klaus Neumann-Ege founded the production company nonfictionsociety. In 2015, he shot his first film, Grenzbock.