Summary
Veteran director Karel Kachyňa’s 1990 war drama set in a Nazi-controlled Jewish ghetto was filmed according to a screenplay penned by Ota Hofman. Central to this motion picture – a Czechoslovak coproduction with France and Great Britain, with an international cast – is the French mime Moreau, who is forced by the Nazis to stage a theatrical performance with child inmates. Their performance is to be presented to a commission of the Red Cross as proof of the supposedly humane conditions prevailing in the ghetto. But the artist decides to conceive his fairytale rendition of Hans and Gretel as a true testimony of the camp’s brutal and shocking reality… Tom Courtenay shines in the leading role, while another British actor, Freddie Jones, is impressive as piano player Rheinberg. This moving story was inspired by the first performances of the children’s opera Brundibár. They took place in the Terezín ghetto from September 1943 to the autumn of 1944, with a special performance arranged for visiting Red Cross inspectors.
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