Overview

Berlin, end of the 19th century. Alexander Hoffmann (Leonard Scheicher) is an ambitious ethnology doctoral student at the Friedrich Wilhelm University. When a delegation of Herero and Nama from "German Southwest Africa" travels to Berlin as part of the "German Colonial Exhibition," Hoffmann meets the group's interpreter, Kezia Kambazembi (Girley Charlene Jazama). Hoffmann develops an intense interest in the Herero and Nama - and, after meeting and talking with them, contradicts the mainstream evolutionist racial theory. Shortly thereafter, the uprising of the Herero and Nama in the colony of "German Southwest Africa" leads to war with the Germans. Hoffmann travels through the country under the protection of the imperial army, collecting artifacts left behind for the Berlin Ethnological Museum. In truth, however, he continues to search for evidence to support his thesis - and for Kezia. On site, Hoffmann witnesses German soldiers carrying out the extermination order with inhuman harshness. But the ethnologist also crosses moral boundaries when he agrees to send his Berlin professor (Peter Simonischek), skulls and skeletons of dead Herero for the purpose of research...