Trailer
Assistive Technologies

Stella: A Life

Runtime
2hrs 1min
Directed by
Kilian Riedhof
Featuring
Paula Beer,
Bekim Latifi,
Damian Hardung
Film Language
in German & English with English subtitles
Body

New England premiere!

Introduced by Karin Oehlenschlaeger, Program Curator, Goethe-Institut Boston. Followed by Q&A with Brandeis University Professor Laura Jockusch, who is currently working on a book about Stella Goldschlag’s life. 

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 German Film Awards. 

Please note: by purchasing a ticket to this screening, you agree that your contact information will be shared with the National Center for Jewish Film for the purpose of including you on their mailing lists. There are no member comps for NCJF Festival Films.

Reviews
Review Text

“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.” 

Review Author
Meredith Taylor
Review Publication
Filmuforia
Review Text

“Aesthetically accomplished and well-paced, Stella. A Life. is a film whose bubbly appearance conceals some very real cruelty, much like its protagonist…”

Review Author
Giorgia Del Don
Review Publication
Cineuropa

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