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A film about the rise and fall of the Red Army Faction, a group of left wing militants suspected of killing dozens of prominent West Germans decades ago, premiered in Munich on Tuesday.

The film provides a graphic account of one of post war Germany’s darkest chapters. It is filmed in a documentary style that has already been picked up as Germany’s entry for Best Foreign Language film for this year’s Oscars, and it is also the most expensive film made in Germany.

The film is produced by Bernd Eichinger who is best known for controversial human portrayal of Hitler in his last days in Downfall, The Baader Meinhof Complex is based on a book by Stefan Aunt.

Aunt and the filmmakers played close attention to detail; including the number of bullets used in each assassination and tried to make an authentic account of the movement without glorifying the militants.

“If you move from the romantic idea…into terrorism, you should realize you are kissing goodbye to your own inflated ideas of ethics,” Aunt told Reuters.

“I believe they realized the lowliness of their doings,” said Aunt, a former editor of Der Speigel newsweekly.

The Red Army is suspected of killing more than 30 people, mainly senior figures in the West German establishment, between 1970 and 1991.

Their also known as the Baader meinhof Gang named after the founders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, They grew from left wing student protests and anti Vietnam War movements in the late 1960s.

Its members were angry with their parents who lived through the Nazi era and now ended up living as middle class men. Many dignitaries and some big figures were killed under their reign of terror including Dresdner Bank head Juergen Ponto and federal prosecuter Siegfried Buback.

Th group were at the height of their game when they kidnapped leading industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer in 1977 that they held hostage for over a month. Eventually he was executed and the identity of the perpetrator is still a mystery.

26 members died during their terror campaign and many were sentenced to long prison terms. Baader and Meinhof were caught and committed suicide in prison. In 1998, the Red Army Faction said it was giving up its struggle and disbanded.

Many members have now been released and are working under false names.
“The brilliant performance by the cast and the extraordinary adaptation of the story allows a view of the early 1970s in the West Germany without glorifying the perpetrators,” said a jury appointed by German Films to select its entry for the Oscars.