The Roots of Madness

Edgar Hagen
Switzerland | 2026 | 107 min
World premiere
Languages : English, German, Pashto, Dari, Arabic, Kurdish, French
Subtitles : English, French

For 40 years, Ulrich Tilgner travelled throughout the Middle East as a reporter for Germantelevision. In the role of melancholic witness, he revisits this region, devastated with the active support of Western powers, reconnecting with his contacts and friends of the time to assess the extent of a disaster that Edgar Hagen’s film re-implants in our memory saturated by the acceleration of geopolitical news.

In a prologue ironically titled “The Prehistory of the Present Times”, Edgar Hagen presents, both literally and figuratively, what led him to The Roots of Madness. The tense editing sets the tone: in 2015, millions of refugees, mostly from the Middle East, flowed into Europe, unwittingly fuelling the rise of xenophobic extremism. Au grand dam d’Ulrich Tilgner. A renowned German television reporter, he has covered nearly every conflict that has devastated this region, with the active backing of Western powers, in retaliation for the September 11 attacks. The Swiss filmmaker accompanies “Uli” on a farewell journey to meet his former contacts and friends on site, combining archives and often painful testimonies to create an unflinching yet sensitive indictment that occupies the space between outrage and melancholy. The film helpfully reintroduces into our memories – saturated by the current acceleration of (the same) imperial logics – the poisoned legacy of 20 years of armed interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, carried out in our name, for the “liberation of peoples” and “democracy”.

Emmanuel Chicon

The Roots of Madness, 2026
Who Are We?, 2019
Journey to the Safest Place on Earth, 2013
Someone Beside You, 2007
Time of the Titans, 2001
Dorothea Buck – Vom Wahn zum Sinn, 1998
Markus Jura Suisse – The Prodigal Son, 1996
Gewitter im Gehirn, 1994
Faxenmacher, 1993
Kleine Lieben, 1991