Brecht2019

Director
Heinrich Breloer

Actors

Burghart Klaussner (Older Bertolt Brecht)
Tom Schilling (Younger Bertolt Brecht)
Adele Neuhauser (Older Helene Weigel)
Lou Strenger (Younger Helene Weigel)
Laura de Boer (Isot Kilian)
Mala Emde (Paula Banholzer)

Starting from the year 1956, Brecht’s year of death, the film looks back on the time of the First World War and the life of Bertolt Brecht.

Bertolt Brecht is one of the most influential German dramatists. His work has been translated into most languages and his plays remain relevant even today. The new biopic from Breloer brings Brecht’s times and his influences to life, highlighting the mind, the collaboration and the women behind his social criticism. The cinematic stage is set with chronological pieces of Brecht’s life beginning with World War One and running through the cabaret-like tumult of the Weimar Republic, foreign exile and Nazi Germany, reconstruction and a success story from the other side of occupied Europe, as Brecht and his entourage built their iconic Ensemble theater in the East Berlin of the German Democratic Republic.

“A pleasant television film in two parts that above all celebrates Bertolt Brecht as a man with charisma that women succumb to, as a distinguished thinker, as an innovator, a successful theater maker, and, last but not least, as ‘the last poet of the German language, the last German genius,’ like Brecht described himself.” – Kino Zeit

“A thoroughly well-acted drama whose stylistic devices are ideal for describing the career of the extremely ambivalent poet.” – Spielfilm.de

“Tom Schilling (as the young Brecht) and Burghart Klaussner (as the adult Brecht) shine in their roles, as do all the supporting actors. Anyone who wants to delve deeper into the writer Brecht and his numerous affairs is in good hands with Breloer’s film.” – WolframHannemann.de