Marc must have been about 25 or 26. He arrives in this wild and perilous place with a smile on his face and experience only of a place where "It is illegal to mow your lawn on Sundays. And nobody does, to avoid disturbing their neighbours.." He is open to everything and takes no precautions to protect himself in this unsafe place. He strides around the slums, carries his wallet in his back pocket, talks to everyone and anyone, doesn't deny himself anything. So it was inevitable that he would get caught up in it all. In a place like this it's impossible to walk through and not attract attention when you are a "Gringo." So he falls in love, gets addicted to coke, thrown out of his host family, invited to work for the most feared local gang leader, and eventually commits murder himself.

But this film is not just a dramatic thriller. It may be just as exciting as an action movie, but there are certain messages and ideas hidden behind all the blood. Marc's desire to help and his respect for people that others might avoid like vermin are very admirable. He refuses to give preference to an European Commission minister at the hospital and continues to treat his gangster. He sees no reason for avoiding the poor area Siloé, because what could be wrong with those people?

On the very first day, Marc's rich colleague from the ER picks him up in his shiny big car, saying, "Why is it that you foreigners are always drawn to the worst places?"

It is true that many Western young people nowadays go on their 'gap' years to poor, far away countries like Mexico, Thailand, India.. It provides an exciting experience of life so different that you couldn't even imagine it, sitting in your middle-class villa on your spotless European streets. And despite Marc's charitableness, in the back of his head somewhere is enjoyment that he is getting from his tourism of humanity. Here are all the extremes of life, and oh, how fun it is to see it!

The richer people in Cali avoid Siloé and other slums with all their powers. They were fortunate enough to pull themselves out of these horrific places, to live in relative safety and great comfort. It is self-protection. For them it would be insanity to throw themselves back into danger, when they realise that they are so fortunate not to be in it now. These people though, to Marc, are disgusting. He can't understand why they don't want to help, and why they keep stopping him from getting involved.

But Marc just isn't the saint he thinks he is. By living with Wanda (a kiosk owner in Siloé) and loving her and befriending the children she takes care of, he is not helping them, but putting them in great danger, especially as he lives incredibly irresponsibly and attracts attention of the worst kind. Because after a while people stop referring to him as "Marc". He becomes either "Doctor", or "the German". Hence the film's title. He, for them, is not a stupid young man, but a representative of Europe, affluence, fortune. He sticks out like a sore thumb and they can't work out what he might want to do in their midst.

There is something in particular that well-off liberal Europeans feel when visiting poor and troubled countries like this: guilt. One starts to say to oneself, "Why was I so fortunate? How come I have so much? I never did anything great to deserve it... Why do they have to suffer so?" This is what was going on in the depths of Marc's little middle-class mind. Though he never acknowledges it. He tries to pretend that he is one of them, but that is rubbish. He could never fit in here in a million years. And so, because these feelings are present deep inside him, he ties to pass the guilt on to others -- he criticises his rich colleagues. He tries to make them feel guilty, but he can't.

There is one type of guilt that he does not feel, however. Several times throughout the film there is talk of the Nazis. But it is always a joke. Understandably, Marc does not feel responsible for what happened in his country half a century ago. His generation has already moved past it. And though they acknowledge it, it does not feel relevant to him. But, our attention is drawn to the fact that other people do still remember it. Meeting a German, what comes to mind? Especially in Colombia, where lots of Nazis fled after the end of WW2. But this works the other way, too. One of the ER doctors that Marc works with tells him that the foreign interns often refer to him as Pablo Escobar, the infamous Colombian drug baron. These are two stereotypes that are sensational and live on in public memory but do not represent the countries as they are now. This is the problem. When one travels, one is welcomed not only as a person, but as a member of the nation and their national culture and history that one comes from. Because of the disastrous nature of Marc's stay in Cali, Schreiber's film seems to claim that understanding between the nations is impossible. But is that really true? I think not. Marc just did not allow himself to believe that there was a difference between himself and the poor Colombians around him. One has to be aware of the complexities involved when you come together with people from dramatically different cultures. Yes, you should think of them as people, but you also remember that they have a different way of doing things, that this place is different. Marc's deeply-buried guilt makes him a little heavy-handed when dealing with them, and makes him forget to think about it all from their position.

When making this film, Schreiber and his crew lived the message that they were putting across. They lived in Colombia for a couple of years and in fact had to cooperate with the local community and favelas (gangs) in order to make his film. They lived there, they treated them with respect, and they did not deny the Colombians', or their own, peculiarities. And so they produced a very full and sensitive and interesting film about international meetings and how to get along with those from such different cultures -- a point that is so relevant now in a world with such open borders.