#TIFF12 Day3: Hannah Arendt

And finally, a trailer has been released, so here's your sneak preview before Tuesday's official premiere.

The grande dame of German cinema, Margarethe von Trotta (who, I feel compelled to mention, is a most wonderfully warm-hearted and animated person) is trying to "put thoughts into images". Deutschlandradio Kultur did an interview earlier this year on the occasion of her 70th birthday, where she ponders that difficult directorial question "How do you show someone thinking?" That might be a reason why no major feature has been dedicated to the Jewish thinker, until now. And apparently Margarethe von Trotta was hesitant.

Hannah Arendt follows von Trotta's fascination with strong women who changed the world (Gudrun Ensslin, Rosa Luxemburg, Hildegard von Bingen...) and strikes a nice balance between Arendt-the-woman and global political times she finds herself in, from what she calls the "dark times" of Nazism to her American exile to the Eichmann trials in Jerusalem.


Hannah Arendt's banality-of-evil dictum helps make sense of several films I have seen over the last few days: Camp 14 & Lore among them. Putting it simply: evil comes from mediocrity not monstrosity, thoughtlessness not stupidity. The antidote? Moral courage.

We are happy that Margarethe von Trotta and her co-writer Pamela Katz will be in conversation with Marc Glassman at our Goethe Directors Talk this Wednesday. (details below) Find the full video of our talk on our new YouTube channel in late September.

by Jutta Brendemühl, Goethe-Institut Toronto