A journey into the heart of darkness of do-gooders

2015, in the summer of mass migration, one image appalled the entire world: 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi from Kobane in Syria drowned trying to escape the militia of the so-called Islamic State in the Mediterranean and was washed up onto the Turkish coast. A wave of emotion seized politicians, intellectuals and Facebook timelines. January 2018, the Turkish military starts the bombing of the Syrian province Afrin with German weapons. There is no public outrage. In Compassion. The History of the Machine Gun, director and writer Milo Rau explores the contradictory terrain between Western self-righteousness and the suffering of the other. Based on interviews with NGO staff, priests and victims of war in Africa and Europe, the actresses Ursina Lardi and Consolate Sipérius examine the border between middle class morality and European humanism. In the end, does it really just boil down to who has the machine gun?