Tibor Locher

Katja Sterner has to start again. Full of confidence, she follows the beckoning of her rediscovered lucky talisman to the beautiful village of Herzfeldt. Will she find happiness there? There is an old pavilion in Herzfeldt where Katja's parents once got engaged. The pavilion is said to have magical powers in matters of love, but now it is to be demolished. Katja quickly decides to offer to restore the pavilion. But she urgently needs to find a job. A few years ago, she quit her job as a restorer to care for her parents. After their death, Katja now needs a new job, but there is simply nothing available in her home town. But Katja takes a positive view of things, and so her lucky charm leads her to Herzfeldt with her few possessions.

“Emmett − Tief in meinem Herzen” (“Emmett – Deep in My Heart”) is a film with theatrical elements, telling the story of the 14-year-old Black teenager Emmett Till, who became the victim of a racist murder in Mississippi, USA, in 1955. This murder is considered the spark for the civil rights movement in the USA as well as a global, public-media confrontation with racism. Emmett’s story is not an exclusively Black or American story. Emmett had to die because he (allegedly) whistled after a White woman, while his killers were acquitted by an all-male, all-White jury, only to openly admit to the murder in an interview a short time later. “Cases like Emmett's are repeated in Germany and around the world. They affect us all – they are the stories of each and every one of us. Almost 70 years after Emmett Till’s murder, we live in a world that is still shaped by structural racism.