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 »