European Films

 

German production and screenwriting heavyweight Bernd Eichinger (Der Untergang / Downfall, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer) will next bring the true story of one of Germany's most notorious terrorist factions to the screen in Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex. Moritz Bleibtreu and Martina Gedeck, the doomed lovers in Roehler's Elementarteilchen (The Elementary Particles), will play the founding members Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof. Former German Shooting Star Johanna Wokalek (Barfuss / Barefoot) will play Gudrun Ensslin, another founding member of the group and Baader's girlfriend. The film will be directed by Uli Edel, who has recently worked in US television but started as a film director in Germany, notably on Christiane F. Shooting on Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex is scheduled to start in August on locations including Berlin and Munich.

 

The Rote Armee Fraktion or RAF, as the Baader-Meinhof Group was also known, was formed at the end of the 1960s as left-wing radicals denounced West Germany as a fascist state after a visit from the Shah of Persia got out of hand and police fatally wounded a left-wing demonstrator. The RAF subsequently set fire to department stores and organised bombings, kidnappings and general armed resistence. They were classified by West Germany as a terrorist organisation. 

 

The film will look at the creation of the RAF in 1967, following the outrage after the Shah's visit, through to 1977 and what is known as the "German autumn", when RAF collaborated with the  Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) to both hijack a plane and have Hanns-Martin Schleyer, then president of the German employers' association, kidnapped (and later, killed). Around the same time, Baader, Meinhof, Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe, another founding member, were found dead in their cells, apparently from suicide.

 

Eichinger himself wrote the script, based on the authoritative nonfiction book from German journalist Stefan Aust also called Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex. 

 

Edel's film will also star Untergang co-stars Bruno Ganz and Alexandra Maria Lara (who played Hitler and his secretary respectively) as well as Nadja Uhl (De Tweeling / Twin Sisters), Karoline Herfurth (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, the upcoming Pornorama) und Hannah Herzsprung, who recently won the Best Young Actress award at the German Lolas for her role as a young piano-playing inmate in Vier Minuten (Four Minutes). 

 

Moritz Bleibtreu recently starred in the international terrorist drama Munich from Steven Spielberg and could also be seen in the French thriller Le concile de pierre (The Stone Council) with Monica Bellucci and Catherine Deneuve.

 

Martina Gedeck played the live-in girlfriend of the playwright under scrutiny in this year's Oscar-winning German film Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others), and also headlined the popular 2001 romantic drama Bella Martha (Mostly Martha).

 

Wokalek can next be seen in another true story: director Philipp Stölzl's Norwand recounts a famous climbing accident that occured in the Alps in 1936. The film co-stars Benno Fürmann and Florian Lukas and will be released in Germany later this year.

 

Der Baader-Meinhof Komplex will hit German screens in 2008.