Nuremberg

Documentary drama

Synopsis

When Ernst Michel (22) first steps onto the press gallery in Courtroom 600 of the Nuremberg Palace of Justice, he can hardly bear how close he is to the defendants. Barely ten meters separate him — a survivor of Auschwitz — from Göring and the others.
When Polish witness Seweryna Smaglewska (29) first enters the Nuremberg Grand Hotel, where she is to stay during her time in the city, she cannot comprehend how the judges and prosecutors of the Nuremberg Trials had celebrated a lavish ball the night before.

“Nuremberg” tells the story of the most important trial of the century through the eyes of these two young individuals, reflecting the hopes and fears, the inner turmoil of two people who, just six months earlier, had been at the mercy of the Nazi death machine in Auschwitz. Seweryna Smaglewska must wait weeks before she is finally allowed to testify — an unending ordeal. Memories resurface, especially of Witold, the love of her life, with whom she had vowed at the fence of the Birkenau camp to start a family if they both survived. But Witold has vanished without a trace. Ernst Michel is by far the youngest among the reporters from around the world. He forces himself every day to report objectively. Then he receives a sensational offer: Hermann Göring wants to meet him, requesting a conversation in his cell. No other journalist will speak to Göring before his execution. But Ernst Michel is tormented by doubts. Can he face the man responsible for the death of his parents? What weighs heavier: the suffering of millions, or a once-in-a-lifetime journalistic scoop?

In addition to the dramatized narrative, the film includes interviews with descendants of Ernst Michel and Seweryna Smaglewska, an interview with Ernst Michel himself, and archival material. The courtroom footage will be digitally restored and colorized, in the style of They Shall Not Grow Old or 24 Hours in D-Day.

Credits

Producers: Michael Souvignier, Till Derenbach
Co-Producer: Kay Siering, Michael Kloft
TV Editors: : Marc Brasse (NDR), Andrea Bräu (BR)
Director: Carsten Gutschmidt
Camera: Jens Boeck
Script: Dirk Eisfeld (based among other sources on “The Innocents in Nuremberg” by Seweryna Szmaglewska)
Executive Producer: Dirk Eisfeld
Line Producers & Production Managers: Robert Sheldon (Zeitsprung), Frederick Keunecke (NDR)
Production Design: Bernadette Redenczki
Costume Design: Julia Szlavik
Make-up: Viktoria Kovacs
Casting: Marc Schötteldreier
Editing: Diana Matous
Composer: Jens Südkamp 


With: Jonathan Berlin, Katharina Stark, Wotan Wilke Möhring, Francis Fulton-Smith and many more.