Edelweiss Pirates

Colour, 35 mm
Germany, 2004, 96 min
Section: Another View
Oficiální stránky: www.edelweisspiraten.com

Synopsis

A true story of courage and human dignity about the fate of a group of young Germans who were known as the Edelweiss Pirates, named after the Alpine flower in their insignia. As the Third Reich was coming to an end in the ruins of Cologne, they fought against Nazi despotism and prepared an attack on the Gestapo headquarters. They were, however, betrayed, arrested and tortured, and the majority of them ended up on the scaffold. “The film speaks of people who resisted the pressure of the era and simply decided to act. The most courageous of them were practically children”, says the film’s director and producer. He worked for seven years on the screenplay with his wife, screenwriter Kiki von Glasow, accumulating authentic documentation, meeting with surviving members of the group, and with the victims’ families, and examining Gestapo interrogation records. The director also had his own reasons for making the film: as a Jew, his father was taken off to a concentration camp. The film was made primarily in St Petersburg.

About the director

Niko von Glasow (born Brücher, 1960, Cologne, Germany) began with Rainer Werner Fassbinder as a production assistant on the films Lola and Theater in Trance. He then worked with a number of other directors, including Georg Stefan Troller, Hellmuth Costard, Alexander Kluge, Peter Zadek and Jean-Jacques Annaud. He studied film at New York University, and then left for the Lodz Film School where he made his first feature Wedding Guests, which won a series of awards, including the Lino Ventura Grand Prix in Angers, the German Film Critics’ Award at the Berlin IFF and the Young Filmmakers’ Prize at the festival of short films Oberhausen. He also wrote, directed and produced the film  Marie’s Song (1994), which won an award in Germany for Best Direction and Best Director of Photography, and several awards at the Kiev IFF. Edelweiss Pirates was screened at several international festivals. Niko von Glasow lives in London and Cologne, where he has his own production company.