Lore

Lore

Cast: Saskia Rosendahl, Kai Malina, Nele Trebs, Ursina Lardi, Hans- Jochen Wagner, Mika Seidel, André Frid, Eva-Maria Hagen
Director: Cate Shortland
Running Time: 109 minutes

Synopsis: Spring 1945 and the German resistance collapses. As the Allied forces sweep across the Motherland, five children embark on a journey which will challenge every notion we have of family, love and friendship.

With their Nazi father (Hans-Jochen Wagner) and mother (Ursina Lardi) imprisoned by American and Russian forces, abandoned to an uncertain fate, Lore (Saskia Rosendahl) takes charge of her younger brothers and sister, guiding them from Bavaria across a devastated country, towards the safety of their grandmother's house 900km away to the north.

On the road, the children struggle to survive the punishing postwar conditions as Lore begins to understand the reality and consequences of her Nazi parent's actions, their support of Hitler and his disastrous war, their direct knowledge and support of the atrocities of the Holocaust.

But as the days turn into weeks, they meet the intriguing and mysterious Thomas, (Kai Malina) an emaciated Jewish refugee seemingly with no past.

He follows the children through forest and field, and slowly, with a mixture of dogged persistence and unsettling kindness, finally works himself into their confidence. But should Lore trust Thomas? And if she doesn't, what will become of the children? Will they survive? Lore asks us to reconsider the nature of love, guilt, and forgiveness in a battle scarred world.

Release Date: September 20th, 2012

Director's Note

From the Director, Cate Shortland:
When I first read 'The Dark Room' by Rachel Seiffert it resonated with me on many levels. The three distinct stories in the novel make history experiential and intimate as each is told from the perspective of a young person trying to make sense of fascist Germany. The struggles of the characters are disturbing but also utterly moving. I was fascinated by Lore's internal landscape; a frightening place filled with a strange combination of surety and ambiguity. The book was given to me by Scottish producer, Paul Welsh after a screening of my first film, Somersault in Edinburgh. Liz Watts, my Australian producer, had given the book to my husband as a birthday present a few months before. There was sense of serendipity.

Rachel writes in fragments, stark observations without commentary. It was frightening to think of adapting her novel to film, as she draws no conclusions. The story was relevant to me, in terms of what it means to be the child of perpetrators. Australia's relationship to its colonial history is suppressed, and having spent quite a lot of time in post Apartheid South Africa and in Germany, these questions are often in my mind. What would I have done in the midst of genocide and horror? Would I have stood up for the weak and persecuted or rather, like most, been a silent bystander or even worse, complicit.

The story is also close to me as my husband's German Jewish family left Berlin in 1936. It is his family photographs in Thomas's wallet. And it is his grandmother's stories that also tie me to Lore, to wanting to understand this dark and painful time. Although I speak virtually no German I knew that the film had to be made in that language to have any level of truth. I worked with the German script editor Franz Rodenkirchen and interviewed elderly Berliners who had been members of Hitler Jugend and Bund Deutscher Mädel. Their stories and attitudes and even on occasion, a complicated nostalgia, helped me understand Lore.

The research I did, especially that into the Einsatzgruppen in Belarus was at times overwhelming. The victims were always just outside of the frame for me. There was no other way of making the film. This was a reality in the filming as well, some of the beautiful houses we used as locations in the former GDR were built by Jewish merchants before the war. Now they stand empty and derelict. Many of the locations such as the armaments factory were manned by slave labourers.

Now these places are deserted and overgrown.

Lore and her siblings are the privileged children of a high ranking SS officer involved in mass murder in Belarus. While they play hopscotch, children across Europe are being systematically murdered. Lore's family is untouched until her father returns from the East in 1945. In 1939 Lore's father was a war hero, in 1945 when the film begins, he is a criminal. I wanted to understand what this does to the psyche of a child. How does a person grow up knowing that those closest to them have committed unimaginable crimes and that genocide happened in the midst of their 'everyday'.

What drew me to Lore and at times repulsed and angered me, was the opportunity to delve into the grey areas. Lore is a believer in one of the most abhorrent and destructive political ideologies of our time. I wanted to understand her lack of empathy, her romantic determination to keep believing even when Germany was suffering defeat. Hitler was seen not only as her Fuhrer but also as a beloved father figure. As he stated " The weak must be chiseled away. I want young men and women who can suffer pain." Lore feels it is her duty to carry this pain uncomplainingly.

I was drawn to understand her fight with her own humanity and sense of belonging. The outside world is oblivious to Lore and her siblings' plight and Lore becomes more and more detached from society. But within her detachment is a growing certainty - she is lost and adrift but she knows something of the awful truth. She has been taught never to question but to obey. By the end of the story she is full of questions that she knows will never be answered. Albert Speer's children stated they could never ask their father about the Holocaust and his role in Germany's slave labor program. Albert Speer Jr. recently stated, " The fact is that when he came back home, I could have asked him all those questions. I thought about it and I didn't do it." His daughter Hilde stated. "I made it easier for him because I only asked up to a certain point and I accepted the answers he gave me." His third son Arnold stated simply, "I never asked him anything connected to the Third Reich." They didn't ask because they couldn't bear the answers.
The lies or the truth.
-Cate Shortland
Sydney April 2012

Production

Lore, based on the novel The Dark Room, by Rachel Seiffert was developed over a seven year period with the assistance of Scottish Screen, UK Film Council and the Australian FilmCommission (2004-11).

Shooting commenced in Gorlitz, Germany on 19th July, 2011 and continued throughout July, August and September in various locations across Germany.

After the 13 day shoot in Gorlitz, the crew moved to Baden-Wurttemberg, the Black Forest region to shoot for a further six days. The story required a substantial amount of location moves, so from Baden-Wurttemberg, the shoot was moved to the Hessen region and shot in various Hessen locations for a period of 13 days. We then finished up in the Schleswig-Holstein region for the final 6 days. The overall shooting period was between 19 July - 14 September, 2011.

Post Production work was done in Sydney, Australia, with a total of 14 weeks editing and 10 weeks sound editing and mixing. Visual FX were completed out of Glasgow, Scotland and the entire music was composed in Germany and recorded in the United Kingdom. The film was completed 13th April 2012.