Our first episode introduces our theme “Us and Them” and opens the series with an interview between Sinan and PhD candidate Laura Herges (Heidelberg University): The traumatized war hero has become a well-known film trope. But how does the image of the suffering veteran influence our opinions on wars that happened in real life? Laura, who writes her thesis in American studies, discusses two movies about the War on Terror: Zero Dark Thirty (2012), which justifies the CIA’s torture of prisoners, and American Sniper (2014), which turns a controversial Navy SEAL into a patriotic martyr-icon. How strongly do films influence our judgement and moral values? Find out in the first episode of “Us and Them.“