Helge Sasse, the head of Senator Entertainment, the distribution company for director Martin Weisz’s Rohtenburg welcomed a federal court’s overturning of a ban on the 2006 film about a convicted cannibal, calling it ‘a landmark decision for artistic freedom.’

When the film was originally released, Armin Meiwes, nicknamed The Cannibal of Rothenburg by the media, complained that the film too closely resembled his own case and therefore was an infringement on his personal rights. Meiwes was sentenced to 8 ½ years in prison after he admitted killing Bernd-Juergen Brandes, a willing victim who recorded his agreement to the killing on tape, and eating 20 kilos of his victims flesh. Meiwes, who later became a vegetarian, had his sentence increased to life following an appeal by prosecutors in 2006.

In Wiesz’s film, called Grimm Love internationally, Thomas Kretschmann plays Oliver Hartman, a computer repairman who finds a willing victim on a website for cannibalism enthusiasts.