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Director and Grimme Award winner Kai Wessel (DIE FLUCHT, 2007; LEBEN WÄRE SCHÖN, 2003; MARTHA JELLNECK, 1988) is filming the dramatic highlights of a world star’s eventful life.
Shortly before filming began, Grimme Award winner Sylvester Groth and ECHO Award winner Roger Cicero were signed for important roles. Multiple-award-winning actor Sylvester Groth (MEIN FÜHRER, 2007) takes on the role of legendary Berlin theatre director Boleslaw Barlog. Roger Cicero, currently one of Germany’s most successful jazz and swing musicians, makes his acting debut in HILDE. He plays musician Ricci Blum, whom Hildegard Knef encounters repeatedly at important stages of her life.
Hildegard Knef was a sinner and a singer, a Hollywood star and a Broadway hit. She loved a Nazi and married a Jew. She fought for her life in the ruins of Berlin and felt at home on Park Avenue. Revered and despised by the German public, her autobiography became the most successful book of the post-war era. Her concerts are legendary. She was a German icon. And she was very, very cool. This is her life.
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Synopsis: HILDE reveals the great personality of a woman with all her dreams, her strength and her wounds, her will to live and survive. From the young actress who became a star in 1946 with Wolfgang Staudte’s DIE MÖRDER SIND UNTER UNS, to the idol who fell from grace because of a harmless nude scene in Willi Forst’s DIE SÜNDERIN (1950), only a few years passed in Hildegard Knef’s career. The lows reliably followed the highs, but she did not give up. Or, in Hildegard Knef’s words: “You realize afterward that it was good the way it was; you know immediately that things are bad the way they are.”
Heike Makatsch is Hildegard Knef. Following films such as AIMÉE UND JAGUAR (1999), GRIPSHOLM (2000), NACKT (2002), ANATOMIE 2 (2003) and KEINE LIEDER ÜBER LIEBE (2005), she is among the most versatile stars of German cinema. She has also impressed in international productions such as LATE NIGHT SHOPPING (2001) and LOVE ACTUALLY (TATSÄCHLICH… LIEBE, 2003), where she appeared alongside Emma Thompson, Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman. For her performance in the title role of the TV production MARGARETE STEIFF, she was nominated for an Emmy in 2006 and received the Bambi (best German actress and audience award) as well as the Bavarian Television Award.
HILDE offers compelling roles for Germany’s acting elite, including Monica Bleibtreu (VIER MINUTEN, 2006), Hanns Zischler (MÜNCHEN, 2005), Michael Gwisdek (GOOD BYE, LENIN!, 2003) and Johanna Gastdorf (DAS WUNDER VON BERN, 2003). They are joined by discoveries such as young British rising star Dan Stevens (SENSE & SENSIBILITY, BBC TV 2008) and versatile stage and screen actor Anian Zollner (WENN WIR UNS BEGEGNEN, 2007).
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A first-class crew has also assembled behind the camera, including cinematographer Hagen Bogdanski, who received the German Film Award in 2006 for DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN, renowned production designer Thomas Freudenthal (EFFI; BELLA MARTHA), and costume designer Lucie Bates, who received a German Film Award in 2005 for ALLES AUF ZUCKER. The screenplay, based on Hildegard Knef’s memoir “Der geschenkte Gaul,” was written by Swedish author Maria von Heland, who most recently directed the Richard Curtis remake FRÜHSTÜCK MIT EINER UNBEKANNTEN (2007), also an Egoli Tossell Film production.
HILDE is produced by Judy Tossell for Egoli Tossell Film AG (THE LAST STATION, HELEN, BLACK BOOK), with funding from Filmstiftung NRW, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and the FFA. Filming will take place partly at original locations in Berlin as well as in North Rhine-Westphalia, Magdeburg and South Africa.
HILDE will be released in German cinemas by Warner Bros. Pictures Germany in spring 2009.
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Director: Kai Wessel
starring Heike Makatsch as Hildegard Knef, Dan Stevens, Monica Bleibtreu, Michael Gwisdek, Hanns Zischler, Anian Zollner, Trystan Pütter, Johanna Gastdorf, Sylvester Groth and Roger Cicero
