This tale of the Nazi resistance is both gentle and heartbreaking
By Jane Albert
There is a moment in From Hilde, With Love when young couple Hans and Hilde are sitting with friends around a lakeside campfire and Hans asks Hilde what scares her. “Everything,” she replies. “Spiders, beetles, the Nazis, my dentist. Love.”
It’s an incongruous statement that gets to the heart of this gentle, brutal, beautiful and heartbreaking film that explores the true story of anti-Nazi resistance fighters Hilde and Hans Coppi who were arrested for treason, with Hilde forced to give birth in prison to baby Hans (still alive today and a consultant on the production).
Johannes Hegemann and Liv Lisa Fries play young resistance fighters Hans and Hilde Coppi.
Although set in Berlin in 1942 against the backdrop of war and at the height of Hitler’s power, From Hilde, With Love steers clear of stereotypical images of Swastikas, brutal interrogations and even heroic resistance fighters.
Instead, we are taken via flashback to idyllic scenes of picnics and campfire parties where we see groups of young people in love, dreaming of marriage and family and acting against the Nazis almost as an afterthought, albeit courageously.
Speaking in Sydney ahead of the film’s Australian premiere at the German Film Festival, award-winning director Andreas Dresen says it was crucial for him to free the story of cliches.
“It was very important to show that everybody involved in the story was a human being,” says Dresen, who grew up in East Germany where the Red Orchestra, as the resistance fighters were later dubbed, were framed as unattainable God-like superheroes.
Dresen was drawn to long-time associate Laila Stieler’s script in part because of the compelling true story of a female resistance fighter, but also given its relevance to the present day.
“Hilde wouldn’t call herself a resistance fighter, she was a little bit too shy for that. She stepped into it accidentally when she followed her heart and that’s very important, I think,” Dresen says. “Especially in Germany but also in many countries of the world we have [the rise of] right-wing parties, we have to be very careful with this development.
“People may think, ‘It will happen anyway, I cannot do anything’ and to follow characters like Hilde we can learn we can do something if we follow our heart, if we feel there’s a wrong development we should do something.”
Given the emotional subject matter, Dresen kept a careful eye on lead actor Liv Lisa Fries (Babylon Berlin) and her fellow cast members.
“Liv is a very open-minded person, very emotional and as an actress she [embodies] these situations, she doesn’t only act. We needed a lot of hugs for each other [but] on the other hand we also needed a lot of humour to get through, so around the shooting we tried to be as friendly and funny as possible.”
In addition, to launching From Hilde, With Love Dresen will attend Q&A events during the three-week festival that will present six films from the Berlin International Film Festival. They will include Foreign Language, a heartfelt drama starring Nina Hoss and Chiara Mastroianni about two teenagers grappling with a boundary-testing friendship.
Meanwhile, Treasure follows Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry, playing a music journalist and her Polish Holocaust survivor father returning to his homeland of Poland in a touching drama.
Also included this year is a celebration of acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog with the 2022 documentary Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer featuring clips of the master’s works and interviews with colleagues Wim Wenders, Nicole Kidman and Robert Pattinson.
There will also be screenings of his 1972 existential odyssey Aguirre, the Wrath of God, and Fitzcarraldo about a harebrained attempt to haul a ship over a Peruvian mountain.
The 2024 German Film Festival runs May 8-29 in Sydney and May 10-29 in Melbourne