Movie In Christian Labhart's new documentary, a defense lawyer speaks with ideals
Director Christian Labhart deliberately wanted to make a biased film with "Suspekt", as he said.
Image: Keystone
In the film "Suspekt", Bernard Rambert talks about his career as a criminal defense lawyer. At the same time, he places the events in a historical context.
Image: Keystone
The eco-anarchist Marco Camenisch was one of Bernard Rambert's well-known clients.
Image: Keystone
Director Christian Labhart deliberately wanted to make a biased film with "Suspekt", as he said.
Image: Keystone
In the film "Suspekt", Bernard Rambert talks about his career as a criminal defense lawyer. At the same time, he places the events in a historical context.
Image: Keystone
The eco-anarchist Marco Camenisch was one of Bernard Rambert's well-known clients.
Image: Keystone
Bernard Rambert stood up for offenders such as the eco-anarchist Marco Camenisch, escapee king Walter Stürm and members of the RAF. In the film "Suspekt", director Christian Labhart, who lives in Wetzikon ZH, takes a look back at the criminal defense lawyer.
20.02.2025, 07:30
SDA
Some people know him as "Red Beni", others give him the less pleasant description of "terrorist lawyer": the now 79-year-old Bernard Rambert, who was monitored by the state for over 14 years and was banned from practicing his profession by the canton of Bern at the end of the 1970s.
Zurich filmmaker Christian Labhart lets the lawyer Rambert look back on his career in the documentary "Suspekt", which is released in cinemas in German-speaking Switzerland on Thursday. The setting is kept simple: The film shows Rambert sitting in an empty factory hall, opposite him a journalist asking questions.
"A biased movie"
Rambert is a leftist. He is convinced of the importance of political protests: "If a climate activist demolishes my car tomorrow, I will be upset and sad for my car. But I will understand the action," he says at one point in the film. Director Christian Labhart, who has already questioned the capitalist social order in several films, also takes a clear left-wing stance.
The editor Julia Klebs, who interviews Rambert in the film, also writes for the left-wing and emancipatory magazine "Widerspruch". Neither victims or their relatives nor prosecutors, i.e. possible opponents of Rambert, have a say in the film. Isn't this just feel-good cinema for a left-wing audience?
Christian Labhart hopes not, as he told the Keystone-SDA news agency. "It was clear to me that I was making a biased film." The commitment that Bernard Rambert has made as a criminal defense lawyer over the past 50 years is so great that it is legitimate to make a film from his point of view.
From Brian K. to Petra Krause
In the film, he reviews what he has experienced in his career. Starting with a case not so long ago: in 2022, he and other lawyers filed a criminal complaint of torture against Brian K., who is also known to the public as "Carlos", due to the conditions of his detention.
Rambert then goes back further. He remembers why he pleaded for acquittal in the case of the Graubünden anarchist and opponent of nuclear power plants Marco Camenisch, who was convicted of murdering a customs officer. Camenisch had previously made a name for himself with explosives attacks on high-voltage pylons.
We learn that Rambert always acted out of the deep conviction that every human being has a right to be treated with dignity. He stood up for this fearlessly and without fear of consequences, as the film shows.
The case of Petra Krause is also well-known. She was arrested in Switzerland in 1975 on suspicion of smuggling weapons and having links to the Red Army Faction (RAF). As her lawyer, Rambert represented the woman, who was subjected to "a strict isolation regime" in prison and for whom this led to a "physical and psychological breakdown", as the defense lawyer recounts in the film.
A lesson in protest history
The 72-year-old filmmaker Labhart had long been aware of the cases of Rambert, who was almost the same age. He had to ask him several times before he agreed to make the film. "In the end, he had two conditions: Firstly, it shouldn't be a 'home story'. Secondly, he wanted to embed the story in history," said Labhart.
This is how Rambert places the events in their historical context. This ranges from the Italian seasonal workers to armed revolutionaries and the associated fight against left-wing terrorism by the Swiss authorities to the Basel women's strike of 2020.
As such, "Suspekt" is a mixture of interview, biography and history lesson. The simple interview scenes are enriched with archive material: We see demonstrators speaking out for the release of Christian Möller and Gabriele Kröcher, two members of the "June 2" movement. They also defended Rambert. The film also shows scenes of the youth protests in Zurich in 1980, which Labhart also witnessed: "It was a creative movement," he recalls.
During filming, filmmaker Labhart was surprised by the lawyer's composure: "There are many in our generation who can only help themselves with cynicism because of the rise of the radical right after the election of US President Trump and the rise of the AfD in Germany," explained Labhart. But: "Bernard Rambert is not bitter."
