Margarethe von Trotta
When the top-grossing films of the last two years include The Dark Knight Rises, Iron Man 3, and Fast and Furious 6, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out how to get a big audience into a movie theatre: make a male-themed, action adventure movie.Not a film about a woman whose major activity is thinking. But that's exactly what German director Margarethe von Trotta did...
When the top-grossing films of the last two years include The Dark Knight Rises, Iron Man 3, and Fast and Furious 6, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out how to get a big audience into a movie theatre: make a male-themed, action adventure movie.
Not a film about a woman whose major activity is thinking.
But that's exactly what German director Margarethe von Trotta did when she made her most recent film about the renowned philosopher, Hannah Arendt.
The film explores a particular moment in Arendt's life, when she wrote a series of articles for The New Yorker, reporting on the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann and a subsequent book -- Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.
She infuriated some parts of the Jewish community by suggesting Eichmann was a bureaucrat who didn't know what he was doing during the Holocaust - and when she criticized some Jewish leaders for their cooperation with the Nazis.
The film has garnered major critical attention and has been sold in at least thirty countries.
Margarethe von Trotta has been making films for almost forty years...and has never been a trend follower.
From her very first film, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, which she co-directed in 1975, until now, she has explored politics, the lives of women and how the personal and political intersect.
Late last year, Margarethe von Trotta received the Herbert Strate Award in Cologne, Germany, for her artistic achievements in film. And the star of Hannah Arendt,Barbara Sukowa - herself a regular in Ms.Von Trotta's films -- was been nominated for "Best European Actress" at the European Film Awards.
Michael Enright spoke to Ms von Trotta last November.