New film at Cannes holds mirror to Germany's past
German-Turkish director Fatih Akin's new film Amrum, which follows a Hitler Youth member on a remote German island towards the end of World War Two, is meant to hold a mirror up to German society, he told Reuters at the Cannes Film Festival.
Amrum, which premiered out of competition, marks Akin's return to the festival in southern France eight years after his last competition entry In the Fade, starring Diane Kruger - the Best Actress winner at Cannes in 2017 for her performance.
Amrum takes place in 1945, said Akin, but the questions raised about how to handle Germany's past remain unresolved.
"We (Germans) had to be bureaucratic with everything. Also with handling the past," said Akin. "We're so slow."
The process of "denazification" imposed by the Allies at the end of the war made it seem like Germany had stripped its population of Nazi ideologies, which isn't true, said Akin.
"To realise that, to look in the mirror - you know, there's a German angst to look in the mirror. My film is a mirror."
Set on the North Sea island of the same name, Amrum is based on the experiences of Akin's 85-year-old mentor and co-writer Hark Bohm, himself a director who decided to hand the project off due to his age.
The film follows 12-year-old Nanning, played by newcomer Jasper Ole Billerbeck, after his mother, a staunch Nazi supporter, falls into a depression upon learning about the death of Adolf Hitler the day she gives birth.
The Hitler Youth member sets off to find the only thing his mother doesn't refuse to eat - white bread with butter and honey.
Those ingredients are in short supply due to the war, which otherwise feels far removed from the isolated island.
Kruger teamed up with Akin again for Amrum, in the role of Tessa, a potato farmer opposed to Hitler who is reported to the local Nazi authorities for traitorous talk for discussing the inevitability of the war's impending end.
To cast Nanning, Akin decided to search outside of urban centres and found Billerbeck at a sailing school, he told Reuters.
"Big city kids, they can't handle nature," he said.
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