timespace coordinates: Berlin, 1995 >> Neustadt West Germany, 1958
The Reader is a 2008 romantic drama film directed by Stephen Daldry and written by David Hare, based on the 1995 German (partly autobiographical) novel of the same name by Bernhard Schlink. It stars Kate Winslet, Ralph Fiennes, and David Kross. It was the last film for producers Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack, both of whom died prior to its release.
The film tells the story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a 15-year-old in 1958, has an affair with an older woman, Hanna Schmitz. She disappears only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a guard at a Nazi concentration camp. (wiki)
Ganz normale Männer – Der ‘vergessene Holocaust’ (2022 documentary)
The Nuremberg Einsatzgruppen trial of 1947/1948 is considered the largest murder trial in history against members of four death squads from the security police and SD (the security service of the SS). During World War II, six million Jews were murdered. Four million died in the extermination camps, but two million people were killed in systematic mass shootings. The perpetrators came face to face with their victims. They shot at men, women, children – day after day, obediently and assiduously, as if it were normal work. Tens of thousands of Germans belonged to the mobile commandos of the task forces and police battalions. Who were these men, how could they commit such murders? What did the few survivors tell, how were they able to escape the mass extinction and live on with the horrific experience? Based on written traditions, original documents, film footage and photos as well as expert statements, the documentary traces the path of one of these murder battalions.
Directors: Manfred Oldenburg, Oliver Halmburger
TimeSpace Warps 