26/10/2005

Sophie Scholl – The Final Days (o.t. Sophie Scholl - Die letzen Tage [+see also:
trailer
film profile] , the prize-winning film by Marc Rothemund , will be released in Italy on October 28 on 45 screens by distributor Istituto Luce . The film that picked up the Best Director and Best Actress awards at this year’s Berlin Film Festival is now the German candidate for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar selection.

"In my country,” said the German director at the presentation of his film in Rome, “Sophie Scholl was the biggest box office dramatic film of the year and it stirred up a lot of attention everywhere, from Europe to South America, especially among young people, even when the events I depicted were unfamiliar to the majority [of the public]." The film tells the true story of Sophie Magdalena Scholl, a 20 year-old student at the University of Munich who, along with her brother Hans, was part of the The White Rose, a group that from 1942-43 attempted to reawaken the conscious of the German people and was suppressed by Nazism through farcical trials and death sentences.

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The screenplay is the result of stories by eyewitnesses that the director interviewed and transcripts of Gestapo interrogations that re-emerged from East German archives. "Sixty years later,” added the 37 year-old Rothemund, “my generation can speak of National Socialism without any sense of guilt but with the desire to keep the sense of responsibility alive in young people."

(Translated from Italian)