Axel Corti

Description
Alternating between early-1970’s interviews with his wife, priest, and other villagers and re-enactments of his final months, the film follows Austrian peasant farmer Franz Jaegerstaetter’s path to martyrdom under the Nazis. The first scene shows his execution, followed by a graveyard tableau in which Franz objects to his priest’s praise for a fallen soldier’s patriotism. Arguments between Franz and his priest and then with a bishop follow, with the clerics both insisting that he owes military service to his country and that he has no right to choose defiance and certain death.Read More »

Synopsis:
‘New York City 1940. A ship arrives filled with exhausted refugees desperate to begin a new lives. Alfred “Freddy” Wolff, a young Austrian Jew, dreams of starting anew in the mythic American West, but instead struggles to overcome the piercing alienation of immigrant life. In Brooklyn, an émigré community tries to recreate their European café life in a local coffee shop, but nothing can disguise their feelings of loneliness and profound loss.Read More »

Synopsis:
‘In the conclusion of Axel Corti’s trilogy Freddy, a Viennese Jew who emigrated to New York after Hitler’s invasion, and Adler, a left-wing intellectual originally from Berlin, return to Austria in 1944 as soldiers in the U.S. Army. Freddy falls in love with the daughter of a Nazi, and Adler attempts to go over to the Communist Zone. But with the advent of the Cold War and continuing anti-semitism, the idealism of both characters is shattered as they find themselves surrounded by cynicism, opportunism, and universal self-deception.’
– National Center for Jewish FilmRead More »

Synopsis:
‘Vienna 1938. After Kristallnacht and the murder of his father, Ferry Tobler, a young Viennese Jew flees from the Nazis and profiteers of Vienna. He scrambles for various exit visas and entry permits, and finally arrives in Prague, where he meets an anti-Nazi German soldier who has escaped from Dachau and a sympathetic Czech relief worker. Together with other Jewish refugees, the three make their way to Paris and eventually to Marseille, hoping to sail to a safe port.’
– National Center for Jewish FilmRead More »