Berlin in June of 1940. While Nazi propaganda celebrates the regime’s victory over France, a kitchen-cum-living room in Prenzlauer Berg is filled with grief. Anna and Otto Quangel’s son has been killed at the front. This working class couple had long believed in the ‘Führer’ and followed him willingly, but now they realise that his promises are nothing but lies and deceit. They begin writing postcards as a form of resistance and in a bid to raise awareness: Stop the war machine! Kill Hitler! Putting their lives at risk, they distribute these cards in the entrances of tenement buildings and in stairwells. But the SS and the Gestapo are soon onto them, and even their neighbours pose a threat.
Acting
Thompson and Gleeson's silences speak louder than any dialogue.
Cinematography
Cramped interiors that make you feel the walls closing in.
Director
Vincent Perez
Emma Thompson
Anna Quangel
Brendan Gleeson
Otto Quangel
Daniel Brühl
Escherich
Mikael Persbrandt
Prall
Katharina Schüttler
Claire Gehrich
Louis Hofmann
Hans Quangel
Rafael Gareisen
Herbert Wegner
Hildegard Schroedter
Ida Kuhn
Ernst Stötzner
Dptm. Head Walter
Godehard Giese
Colonel Krüger
Jacob Matschenz
Dietrich Necker
Rainer Reiners
Salesman Franz Kanz
Lars Rudolph
Enno Kluge
Uwe Preuss
Persicke
Katharina Abt
Flower Shop lady I. Schneider
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Based on Hans Fallada's 1947 novel 'Jeder stirbt für sich allein,' written in 24 days while the author was literally dying. The real Otto and Elise Hampel were executed in 1943; their actual postcards are preserved in German archives.
Daniel Brühl, who plays the conflicted detective Escherich, is half-German, half-Spanish — casting a Spanish-German actor to hunt German resistance fighters adds a delicious meta-layer of European identity tension.
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