A day in the life of an officer, an executioner from a nearby prison. He gets up at dawn, has breakfast, reprehends his wife for over-spending, takes out the trash and sees to his paralysed son. In the prison he hears the verdict on a condemned man whose mind fills with incongruous memories of his life. The fatal shot is followed by a prescribed glass of vodka; the man sees prisoners marching in a line and feels compassion for them. He passes by a parked van and returns home by bus. The man sees the corpse loaded into a van. Later he fulfils a promise he made to his son, tied to a wheelchair. They go out to fly a kite. The idyll is thwarted by a street urchin who pushes the wheelchair over and calls the boy a cripple. The man brutally beats up the young bully’s drunken father. In the evening he writes an application to extend his work contract since he needs money for his son’s operation. As he falls asleep, the van speeds through the darkness. This cheerless and detached testimony emerges from a gentle night-time image of a courtyard nestling between housing estates. Dogs are howling, a drunkard sleeps on a bench. The audiovisual documentary feel of the film evokes a suggestive atmosphere without specifying the setting of the drama itself. The filmmaker deliberately surrenders judgement on his work in the spirit of a confession – don’t judge and you will not be judged. The Cottbus Film Festival is honored to present The Kite, awarded the Ecumenical Jury Prize at Cottbus 2002, in the East of the West section.