Der Baader Meinhof Komplex is a new German film that depicts the real-life events of West Berlin in the 60s and 70s. Nothing strange there, you would think, until your parents remind you that the bloodiest terrorist activity seen in Germany was occurring at the time, by a group known as the Baader Meinhof Gang or the Red Army Faction. What’s more interesting is the fact that these terrorists were middle-class, educated university students - some of them wives anf mothers. They were to give everything for an ideological fight against what they saw as an increasingly authoritarian and capitalist society. Furthermore, they were winning both the hearts and minds of the public while doing so.

Radical members and leaders Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ennslin led an increasingly violent and ruthless campaign of bombing, kidnapping and assassination against leading industrialist figures, bankers and judges that culminated in the hijack of a Lufthansa jet filled with passengers. By this time the three leaders had been imprisoned and were to be traded in exchange for the safe return of the plane and passengers. However, German special forces recaptured the plane and the next morning the leaders were found dead in their cells. It remains up for debate whether the Government took further action, or the prisoners committed suicide – there was no concrete explanation, but a corporate chairman was executed in revenge.

The Baader Meinhof Gang saw armed struggle as the only solution. They also accepted the risks involved, knowing full well that it would result in an ultimate sacrifice. Perhaps the American-Apparel-clad hipsters that will inevitably flock to see this film when it is released here on 14 November will be forced to think about what it means to effect real change, and whether a Baader or a Meinhof could ever be found today among them.

To start some cogs turning we thought it’d be a good idea to compile a modern-day hitlist that we think the gang would have been proud of:

Der Baader Meinhof Komplex is to be screened in the UK on 14 November.