When German filmmaker Andreas Dresen was looking to cast the lead in his compelling WWII biopic From Hilde, with Love, one person stood out: Babylon Berlin star Liv Lisa Fries.
"I have always had the feeling, when I saw her acting, that you could look straight into her soul through her eyes. And this is very interesting for a character like Hilde, who is, in the beginning, very naive and then gets stronger and stronger," he says.
Based on the story of real-life medical assistant Hilde Coppi, the film shows how she met her future husband Hans while running interference with a group of young Berliners appalled by the rise of the Nazi regime. Their resistance cell was dubbed the Red Orchestra, after their communist connections.
They would risk life and limb to paste stickers over anti-Soviet propaganda posters and relay messages from German prisoners of war communicating with family members via the Voice of Russia aka Radio Moscow.
When the Gestapo closed in on their ranks, a pregnant Hilde held her head high and refused to forsake her beliefs as she was sent to Plötzensee prison.
This is a tragic but inspiring tale of love, hope and resistance against the odds — the perfect subject for the opening night movie of this year's German Film Festival, following its global premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) in February. (It was nominated for the highest award at the festival, the Golden Bear.)
Originally, Hilde's story was to be part of a TV series highlighting various German women who became resistance fighters in the Red Orchestra.
"There were quite a lot of brave women resisting the Nazis, and they weren't only making coffee for their male partners," Dresen says, acknowledging history writers often leave women's achievements out or push them to the margins.
Screenwriter Laila Stieler focused on Hilde's story as a proof-of-concept episode. It soon became apparent there were legs for a feature.
"Hilde's destiny hit me very hard, because she is a kind of shy hero who wouldn't necessarily call herself a resistance fighter. But she was so brave," Dresen says.
A divided Germany
Dresen was born in Gera, East Germany, three hours' drive south of Berlin, in 1963. It was the same year US President John F Kennedy gave his historic speech in Berlin on the West German side of the wall.
During the Cold War years, the Red Orchestra were mythologised on either side of the divide — portrayed as either titanic warriors or villainous traitors to the cause.
"The reason was to protect or to fight against the East German system," Dresen says.
"We heard a lot of cliches about the so-called resistance fighters who were always superheroes who were so big and so strong, and I felt always so small in comparison."
From Hilde, with Love reveals a more realistic side of Hilde and her idealistic friends. "For me, it was very interesting to show them as human beings; as young people falling in love with each other, who wanted to have families," Dresen says.
Dresen says Stieler was interested more in this angle than historical cliches: "We also wanted to show characters who are part of the Nazi system in a more human way. They were not always dangerous animals."
This includes a steely warden at Plötzensee (Lisa Wagner), who gradually softens towards Hilde after she gives birth, and Dresen regular Alexander Scheer as real-life pastor Harald Poelchau.
The prison chaplain helped people escape as the Nazis seized power, comforted those sentenced to be executed by the regime, and later wrote a book about his experiences.
"In a way, even if he was a part of the system, he brought a lot of humanity to these situations and helped a lot of people, including Hilde," Dresen says.
Lest we forget
Dresen wanted the film to feel current, with production designer Susanne Hopf paring back the period details, Birgitt Kilian's costume design drawing heavily on the city's op shops and Uta Spikermann's hairstyling not entirely dissimilar to young Berliners today.
"We tried to create an atmosphere for the movie which brings it a little bit closer to our present," Dresen says.
In this way, From Hilde, with Love feels like a clarion call and a warning all in one.
"In my opinion, it's better to make characters comparable to our time instead of a historical dimension where you can say, 'This happened a long time ago and has nothing to do with my world,'" Dresen says.
"That is dangerous. It's hard to understand that we are all human beings and, if you take the wrong exit, then we can create these horrible systems and it happens again."
Hilde's actual son, Hans, was one of the film's first viewers during a private screening in Berlin.
"It was very moving, because he could deal with a time in his life that he was a part of, but cannot remember, because he was only eight months old when he left his mother," Dresen says of the screening.
"He was touched very deeply."
Now aged 81, Hans was a great help to the production.
"He became a historian researching the Red Orchestra… and he helped us so much in making the movie," Dresen says.
Hans also attended the Berlinale premiere.
"He went on stage and raised his fist like a resistance fighter and had a standing ovation," Dresen says.
"This was kind of like closing a circle of his life, which began so horrifying because he lost his parents and, after 81 years, they came back to him."
The German Film Festival runs from May 7–29 in Canberra; before opening in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide, Byron Bay and Perth.