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No Mercy, No Future
No Mercy, No Future
	Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Helma Sanders-Brahms
Written by	Helma Sanders-Brahms
Produced by	Helma Sanders-Brahms
Cinematography	Thomas Mauch
Edited by	Ursula West; Hanni Lawerenz; Bettina Böhler
Music by	Manfred Opitz; Harald Grosskopf
Production; company	Helma Sanders-Brahms Filmproduktion GmbH
Distributed by	Basis-Film-Verleih GmbH
Release date	1 November 1981 (Hof International Film Festival);
Running time	108 minutes
Country	West Germany
Language	German

No Mercy, No Future (German: Die Berührte, "The Touched") is a 1981 West German drama film directed by Helma Sanders-Brahms.

Plot

Veronika Christoph, the troubled daughter of uncaring bourgeois parents, has been institutionalized due to her schizophrenia. Without proper psychiatric treatment for her unearthly visions, she prowls the streets along the Berlin Wall at night in search of God, yet settles for the company of strange, exiled men.

Cast

Elisabeth Stepanek as Veronika Christoph
Jorge Reis as Demba
Curt Curtini as Magician
Hasan Hasan as Monsef
Carola Regnier as Physician
Hubertus von Weyrauch as Veronika's Father
Irmgard Mellinger as Veronika's Mother
Nguyen Chi Danh as Patient
Erich Koltschack as Old Man
George Stamkoski as Greek Man
Karl Heinz Reimann as God's Son
Abdel Wahed Askar as Ibrahim
Nabil Reiroumi as Salem
Harald Hoedt as Patient
Erika Dannhoff as Countess
Günther Ehlert as Death

Release

The film was released on DVD by Facets Multi-Media in 2008.^[1]

Reception

Thomas Elsaesser, author of European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood, wrote that No Mercy, No Future was a "relative" failure in the commercial and critical aspects compared to Germany, Pale Mother and that the situation "may have led Sanders-Brahms in the direction of the European art cinema."^[2] London's Time Out has referred to the film's performances as faultless^[3] and it was screened at the 1982 Berlin International Film Festival^[4] and won the British Film Institute's Sutherland Trophy Award for 1981. Critic Michael Atkinson praised the film as a "classic, show-it-all acting coup that doesn’t wriggle free of your memory very easily."^[5]