Daniela Völker, USA/ISR/POL/D/GB 2024. Shown in a few cinemas, no VoD dates yet.
The focus is on the family of Rudolf Höß, commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, whose sweet home is only separated by a wall from the unimaginable horrors of the gas chambers and crematoria. The Big Brother arrangement of the cameras and microphones with very free acting as well as the forensically compiled soundscape create a disgustingly authentic digital look that is close.
The film tries to go behind the historical experience, to bring us closer to the moment of the crime, which is impossible but still offers some insight. The entire dimension of one’s own looking away is also captured; what wars, what sufferings have already become commonplace for us?
Tim Abele
Jonathan Glazer, USA/UK/P 2023. Stream on Amazon and Videobuster, DVD: Leonine.
The director and screenwriter Benjamin Martins took the bolder path with his low-budget film, which was made without any funding: he not only concentrated on the last hours of the writer Jochen Klepper and his family, but also staged them in an expressive and surreal way an unusual square image format, without any regard for realistic accuracy. But always with an eye on the issues of exclusion and self-determination, which are still important today.
The Christian writer Klepper, his Jewish wife and his stepdaughter chose suicide before the two women were deported in 1942. During a conversation with Adolf Eichmann, which has been handed down historically, dolls hang on the wall and photographs begin to speak – eloquent symbols of the man’s self-doubt. And more and more objects disappear from the family’s apartment, which is sparsely furnished anyway, as the walls push in on the people, literally taking away their freedom little by little.
Rudolf Worschech
Benjamin Martins, Germany 2021. Stream on Amazon and Magenta TV, DVD: 375 Media.
Franz Jägerstätter, the historical role model, born in 1907 in the Austrian mountain village of Radegund, married to Franziska, father of three daughters, was a simple farmer. But his conscience and his Christian faith forbade him to kill. Jägerstätter, played in the film as a warm-hearted family man and stoic man of principles by August Diehl, refuses to do military service. In the Nazi Empire, this was seen as undermining military strength and was punished with death.
In the film, Jägerstätter seeks the support of the church, in the person of Pastor Ferdinand Fürthauer (Tobias Moretti), but he is not averse to the Nazis and tries to convince Franz of the pointlessness of his refusal. Over time, the mood in the village turns against Jägerstätter: he is insulted, his family is excluded, and his daughters are spat on. But Franz remains steadfast like the mountains of his homeland, remains determined, even in the face of death: “I can’t do what I think is wrong.”
Terrence Malick’s film doesn’t make it easy for the viewer, because Jägerstätter has something to lose: his family. He doesn’t make the decision to sacrifice his life for his principles in a vacuum. At the same time, he demonstrates how people have become heroes “who have faithfully lived a life in secret and lie in graves that no one visits,” as a quote in the credits says, and that resistance also arises from “unhistorical acts.” . Just like Franz Jägerstätter’s doing nothing, not capitulating, not participating.
Michael Güthlein
Terrence Malick, USA/D 2019. Stream on Amazon, Apple TV+ and others. DVD: Pandora.
“Injustice and Resistance” / “Wankostättn”
In 1979, the first memorial rally for the murdered Roma and Sinti took place in the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The French politician and Jewish Holocaust survivor Simone Veil took part and said in her speech that from now on the ashes of Jews and Sinti and Roma can no longer be separated. In doing so, she linked the experience of the Shoah with that of Porajmos, as the genocide of the Sinti and Roma is called in the Roma language.
Despite this gesture of solidarity, Porajmos only had a sporadic presence in the media. The first documentary that deals with the genocide and the social and racist discrimination against Roma and Sinti that continued after 1945 is Peter Nestler’s Injustice and Resistance. What is special is not the abundance of archival material or a specific aesthetic. Nestler and his cameraman Rainer Komers step back, cultivate a film language of making excuses and in doing so also create a portrait of Romani Rose, who, as a stirring and educated narrator and face of the civil rights movement, leads through the film and the story of a historical reappraisal.
Karin Berger also gives the protagonist in »Wankostättn« space to unfold his memories. The 16 mm material with Karl Stojka was taken during the filming of the documentary about his sister; his recordings were not used at the time. Until Berger made Karl’s voice heard again long after his death. In the 1997 film, Stojka, born in 1931, walks through a block of houses in Vienna, the Wankostättn, an open-air area and meeting place for Roma and Sinti from all over Austria from the 15th century to 1941. To the original sound of his descriptions, the concrete buildings disappear and the social life of people in the 1930s comes to life: the meadow, the caravans, the horses, the children – everything appears like a second film over our inner eyes. A spiral-like narrative that often accompanies biographical remembering. The entire tragedy of Porajmos manifests itself in the gaping absence of what Stojka describes here. Stojka’s childhood ends the day he comes to Wankostättn with his brother and everyone, including his grandparents, suddenly disappears and is deported to Auschwitz. He visited this place again and again, where nothing could remember but him. “When I leave here again, I’ll be completely empty.”
Maxi Brown
Peter Nestler, D 2022, until 3.11. in the 3sat media library.
Karin Berger, Aut 2023, at vodclub.online.
The material basis was the copy of an official protocol (available as a copy online) – also in the current third film adaptation in 2022 for ZDF, which was initiated by the 80th anniversary of the conference and directed by Matti Geschonneck, which, like in 1984, included Paul Mommertz, who died in July wrote the script. However, the documentary basis and the historically meticulous setting in terms of production design and details (among other things, it was filmed in the original villa) suggest –
usual in the genre – a factual authenticity that the book, which is often generously furnished with almost arabesque dialogues, cannot redeem. A sober production with distancing elements of historical knowledge would certainly have been more useful here.
Silvia Hallensleben
Still until 18.11. in the ZDF media library
Taika Waititi, USA/D 2018. Stream bei Amazon und Disney+, DVD: 20th Cent. Fox.
Dominik Graf, D 2023. Stream on Amazon and Apple TV+, DVD: Goodmovies.
Today you can no longer see the crimes in these places. While Stefan Neuberger’s camera gently roams through villages and forests, past repurposed buildings and monuments, the film reconstructs the violent history of this “cultural landscape” in excerpts from official correspondence, newspaper articles and diaries, which the actress Katharina Meves narrates from the voice-over. “Condition and Terrain” not only proves that every “ethnic German” must have known what the regime was trying to achieve. The film also reflects the helpless way of coming to terms with the past in West and East and shows in clever text-image-sound montages how terror allies itself with the harmless, fascism with kitsch. In the end it is as if no stone was left unturned.
Sabine Horst
Ute Adamczewski, D 2019. Streaming and DVD: Absolut Medien.
Oliver Hirschbiegel, D 2015. Stream: Amazon, Netflix. DVD: Eurovideo.
You don’t necessarily have to agree with this verdict. Like every ban on images, Lanzmann’s ban challenges the very violations that he so vehemently opposes. At the same time, it can also be a guideline: for a different way of portraying the break in civilization that Auschwitz marks. A depiction like in “The Investigation”, RP Kahl’s adaptation of the documentary piece of the same name by Peter Weiss.
Kahl transforms the text, a poetically condensed record of the first Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, into a precise and frightening analysis of the Nazi extermination machinery. All he needs is a grey-black room, an admirably concentrated ensemble and the sober language of Peter Weiss. The descriptions of the atrocities by surviving witnesses, the cynical objections of the defense attorney and the shameless lies of the defendants provide an almost complete picture of the Auschwitz system. “The Investigation” proves that language can be more powerful than any image when dealing with the Holocaust in film.
Sascha Westphal
RP Kahl, D 2024. DVD: Released on DVD on January 31, 2025.
