Berlin, été 42

BERLINALE 2024: Nomination for the Golden Bear

A calmly told film about Hilde Coppi (1909 - 1943), who was sentenced to death by the National Socialists as a member of the communist resistance group ROTE KAPELLE. Liv Lisa FRIES, the superstar from the German quality series BABYLON BERLIN, plays this extraordinary role with calm precision.

The German director Andreas DRESEN has been making very successful films that deal with Germany's past and present for 25 years. DRESEN has already been nominated twice for the EUROPEAN FILM AWARD (2002 for HALBE TREPPE / 2008 for WOLKE NEUN).

Partly in flashbacks (with wonderful images of the Müggelsee in summer), the story of the married couple Hans (Johannes HEGEMANN) and Hilde Coppi, who offered modest resistance to the Nazi regime through a communist-minded circle of friends, is impressively told. Both were sentenced to death in the merciless dictatorship. Their son Hans Coppi Junior was born while they were still in prison, and his voice can be heard at the end of the film as an 80-year-old man.

This film is a monument to the Coppis and their circle of friends that is worth seeing. Other roles include wonderful German actors such as Lisa WAGNER as a prison guard who is gradually becoming capable of compassion, Alexander SCHEER (EUROPEAN FILM AWARD 2019: nomination for GUNDERMANN) as a sensitive priest and Florian LUKAS (known from the German quality series WEISSENSEE) as a nasty prison doctor.

Well worth seeing!