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The film Nasty Girl goes hand in hand with Olaf Hoerchelmann’s ideas about public memory. "Public memory is an important process through which the collective identity of a community is constructed" (Hoerschelmann). In the film, Sonja’s battle to find the truth about her hometown’s involvement in the Holocaust threatens to deconstruct her community’s identity and therein lies the main conflict of the film. In the movie, Sonja is selected to write an essay on her hometown’s involvement in Nazi Germany during the Third Reich. Throughout her life, Sonja was led to believe that her town resisted the Nazi uprising, which in her mind glorifies her town. She was told that because of their Christian beliefs (and according to Hoerschelmann this was not uncommon for German Christians, particularly Protestants) her town resisted the Nazi uprising. However, when Sonja goes to research the topic, she comes up empty handed several times. She can not find information on her town’s involvement until approximately half way through the film. It is here that she begins to discover the truth, which is that her town’s current leaders were not only involved in the Third Reich, but also