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# Games about refusing violence played out at a Hamburg cinema
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/games-about-refusing-violence-played-out-at-a-hamburg-cinema/
- Published: 2026-09-29T19:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-10T17:07:47.000Z
- Description: Gamerausch put a bullfighter, a deserter, and a stray dog on one bill
- Author: Kill Screen Staff
- Tags: News, Gamerausch, Mélanie Courtinat, Total Refusal, Alan Kwan, Film, cinema, machinima, violence, berlin, Germany, #radar-item, #events

Event details

When

Oct. 30, 2026, 7 p.m. (Berlin edition)

Where

Filmrauschpalast, Berlin

On Sept. 29, the Berlin collective [Gamerausch](https://gamerausch.de/?ref=killscreen.com) brought a triple bill called Unplaying Violence to Abaton Kino in Hamburg: two games played start to finish and one film shot inside a shooter, introduced by media scholar Lars Dolkemeyer. [The announcement](https://www.instagram.com/p/DdttrPfCJKv/?ref=killscreen.com) opened by reciting the oldest complaint about the medium, that games make children "sad, lonely, and aggressive," then answered with a category instead of a defense.

0:00 

/0:30 

1× 

From the trailer for **How to Disappear* (2020) by Total Refusal, shot inside **Battlefield V*. The clip plays silent here; [the full trailer](https://vimeo.com/332820047?ref=killscreen.com) has sound.

Mélanie Courtinat's [*Indulto*](https://melaniecourtinat.com/Indulto?ref=killscreen.com) (2025) walks a torero down a corridor toward a bull. The fight happens offscreen, and the final choice, kill or spare, ends the same way. Total Refusal's [*How to Disappear*](https://totalrefusal.com/home/how-to-disappear?ref=killscreen.com) (2020) spends 21 minutes trying to desert inside *Battlefield V*, a game with no way to leave the fight. Alan Kwan's *Scent* (2025) gives you a stray dog gathering the souls of the dead while a massacre goes on around it.

None of the three is a peaceful game, which is what I like about the bill. Gamerausch's phrase was "un-violent" play: work that admits the violence is there and declines the verb. In each case, the refusal changes nothing. The bull dies. The deserter has nowhere to go. The dog can only watch, which [Kwan told Killscreen last year](https://www.killscreen.com/alan-kwan-scent-video-game-witness/) was the idea: "being a witness without power." In 2011 we were [passing along the complaint](https://www.killscreen.com/what-is-lost-when-civilians-are-absent/) that *Battlefield 3* left players with two actions, running around and shooting. These artists took that limit as their subject.

Gamerausch has spent [four years](https://taz.de/!6180480?ref=killscreen.com) putting games on the screen at Filmrauschpalast in Berlin's Moabit, one person on the controller and everyone else watching, the same arrangement [Kwan built for *Scent* in Bristol](https://www.killscreen.com/alan-kwan-rebuilt-scent-with-a-rock-ing-controller/). Founder Julius Hackspiel told [Cineuropa](https://cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/496158/?ref=killscreen.com): "A lot of people enjoy watching other people play games." The collective was in Hamburg with Futura Cinema's incubation programme and left with [an honorary mention from CICAE](https://cicae.org/news/innovation-in-action-european-cinema-projects-take-centre-stage-in-hamburg?ref=killscreen.com), the art-house cinema confederation. Watching turns out to be one more way of not pulling the trigger.

A Berlin edition at Filmrauschpalast was [announced for Oct. 30](https://www.instagram.com/p/DeSLsQTiO9n/?ref=killscreen.com), with the artists joining for a Q&A.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/10/indulto-melanie-courtinat-flowers.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/10/indulto-melanie-courtinat-bull.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/10/indulto-melanie-courtinat-installation.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/10/how-to-disappear-total-refusal-cliff.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/09/scent-still-1.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/25/84/2584b75d-4bd6-4cce-8259-f1d1c65abbb5/content/images/2026/09/scent-still-2.jpg)

Top row: **Indulto* by Mélanie Courtinat, in stills and as an installation. Bottom row: **How to Disappear* by Total Refusal and two stills from **Scent* by Alan Kwan. Images: the artists

Killscreen keeps a record of nights like this one, when games leave the console for a cinema, a gallery or a festival sidebar. The free newsletter is where that record goes out.

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