STELLA. A LIFE.
NEW ENGLAND PREMIERE
Introduction by Karin Oehlenschlaeger, Program Curator, Goethe-Institut Boston
Q&A with Brandeis University Professor Laura Jockusch, whose current project is a book about Stella Goldschlag, this drama’s subject
Stella, played by the magnetic Paula Beer (Never Look Away, Transit, Frantz), is a vivacious, talented young woman in Nazi Berlin working as a Jazz singer despite the repressive climate and the risk of passing as a non-Jew. When tides turn and she is forced into hiding with her parents, Stella begins working with a passport forger. Exposed and captured by the Gestapo, she faces the most dire and deadly of choices: face deportation to Auschwitz for herself and her parents or become an informant for the Gestapo identifying Jews hiding in Berlin. This provocative drama is based on the true story of Stella Goldschlag who, from September 1943 until the end of the war, delivered hundreds of fellow Jews to the Gestapo, and was put on trial after the war.
Nominated for four 2024 German Film Awards.
“Paula Beer turns in another dynamite performance…. Stella. A Life. is an effective exploration of the horrors of war and the devastating emotional and physical effects on the victims in their desperate will to survive.” – Meredith Taylor, Filmuforia
“Aesthetically accomplished and well-paced, Stella. A Life. is a film whose bubbly appearance conceals some very real cruelty, much like its protagonist…” – Giorgia Del Don, Cineuropa
Director: Kilian Riedhof | Germany/Austria | 2024 | 120 min | German with English subtitles
Co-Presented by Goethe-Institut Boston New Films From Germany Series
