13/10/2011

While admirers of the political theories of Hannah Arendt [pictured] are getting ready to celebrate the 105th anniversary of her birth tomorrow, Margarethe von Trotta will start shooting on October 16 on a biopic about the author of The Human Condition.

The director’s woman-centred cinema frequently betrays her fascination with the great female figures in German and world history, which she researches herself to write her screenplays before casting charismatic Barbara Sukowa in the acting role. After Rosa Luxemburg in 1986 and Hildegard von Bingen [+see also:
trailer
film profile] two years ago, in Hannah Arendt, the actress, now in her sixties, will step into the shoes of the German Jewish philosopher at the time of the Eichmann case.

Exiled in America at the time, Arendt covered for the New Yorker the trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann, which was held in Jerusalem in 1961. Afterwards, she published the highly controversial book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, which was wrongly accused of suggesting that the Nazi was close to Zionism and of criticising Jewish deportees for their passivity.

Starring opposite Sukowa are Axel Milberg in the role of Arendt’s husband, the anti-Stalinist communist poet and philosopher Heinrich Blücher, Janet McTeer as her friend the novelist Mary McCarthy and Julia Jentsch as her secretary. Martin Heidegger will make a brief appearance in the story.

Shooting will kick off in North Rhine-Westphalia, after which the team will relocate to Israel, New York and Luxembourg. Produced by Heimatfilm, Hannah Arendt will be released in October 2012 by NFP marketing & distribution.

(Translated from French)