10/10/2023 - German director Kilian Riedhof offers up an ambiguous and complex character who will do anything to survive

Stella. A Life [+see also:
interview: Kilian Riedhof
film profile], German director Kilian Riedhof’s latest feature film which was presented in a world premiere within the Zurich Film Festival’s Gala Premieres section, is the product of meticulous research into the tragic fate of Stella Goldschlag, a young Jewish woman from Berlin who betrayed hundreds of Jews, including close friends, so as to save herself and her family. The ambiguity of this character, the narcissism hiding behind her blond curls and her childlike eyes, and the tragedy of a life marked by deportation and a burning sense of guilt, are the main drivers in Riedhof’s latest film.

Stella Goldschlag, played by the talented and multiple-award-winning actress Paula Beer, has gone down in history as a traitor and a cold and calculating, arch manipulator. What she did was nothing short of cruel, but the desperate situation in which she found herself (as a Jew in Germany during Nazi rule) and the torture she herself suffered, lend her case decided ambiguity and force us to re-examine her actions in a more sympathetic light. As both victim and executioner, femme fatale and girl-next-door, Stella is an incredibly interesting character to dissect, a mysterious figure whom Kilian Riedhof has portrayed without falling into the trap of the good-bad dichotomy. The result is a cruel and historically well-researched movie, led by an actress who’s perfect for her role.

It’s the egocentricity which animates young Stella and which is foregrounded by the director that makes the film especially modern. The story might be set at the height of the Second World War, but the protagonist’s desperate focus on herself and on her own needs, and her determination to live, are characteristics which seem to be a universal theme on screen today. Much like Stella, many (budding) socialites’ egos have fatally replaced the collective “we”, justifying (almost) any act, no matter how ill-judged. Anything now seems to be acceptable if it’s in the name of our own survival, as if society were nothing but an accumulation of little entities, incapable of interacting and caught in an ongoing competition for a prize which turns out to be nothing but smoke and mirrors.

Beyond the tragedy of her life story, the film stresses Stella’s “normality”, the fact that she’s a young woman like so many others. This is what makes her actions even more abominable and which urges the audience to ask themselves what they would have done in her position. In this sense, the central questions the film asks are how far would a regular person go to save their own skin, and at what point does morality give way to pure opportunism?

Revolving around the theme of guilt, the film offers up an ambiguous character who clings as best she can to the certainties she has constructed, so as not to become the monster everyone imagines. Aesthetically accomplished and well-paced, Stella. A Lifeis a film whose bubbly appearance conceals some very real cruelty, much like its protagonist...

Stella. A Life is produced by Letterbox Filmproduktion (Germany), Seven Pictures Film (Germany), Real Film Berlin (Germany), Amalia Film (Germany), Dor Film (Austria), Lago Film (Germany), Gretchenfilm (Germany), DCM Pictures (Germany), Contrast Film Zürich (Switzerland) and blue Entertainment (Switzerland), in co-operation with Studio Hamburg Production Group (Germany). The movie is sold worldwide by Global Screen.

(Translated from Italian)