- Original name: The Turncoat / Der Überläufer
- Country: Germany
- Genre: drama, military, history
- Producer: F. Gallenberger
- World premiere: April 1, 2020 (Germany)
- Starring: L. Benesch, R. Bock, J. Niveoner, K. Schüttler, U.kh Tukur, B. Medel, S. Ursendowski, F. Lucas, A. Bayer, J. Nickel and others.
- Duration: 180 minutes
The military film The Turncoat was directed by the German director of the biographical drama Colonia Dignidad and Academy Award winner Florian Gallenberger. The film is based on the international bestseller Sigefried Lenz, an unpublished novel Der Überläufer written in 1951. This is the story of how a German soldier got involved with a Polish partisan, which was politically undesirable in the post-war period. Only after the death of the writer was the manuscript found and turned into a brilliant two-part film. The audience will not only experience the adventures of a German soldier, but also a touching love story at the height of the war. Watch the trailer for The Turncoat, due in 2020.
IMDb rating - 6.8.
Plot
1944 year. This is the last summer of the war, and the news from the Eastern Front is disappointing. Young soldier Walter Proska is a young soldier of the Wehrmacht who begins to doubt the goals of the war. He no longer understands who the real enemy is, and whether he should fulfill the so-called duty to his fatherland, drowning out his own conscience.
Proska is assigned to a small unit that is supposed to secure the railway line and fortify in the forest fortress. Under the scorching sun, the soldiers receive orders from the non-commissioned officer commander, which become more and more inhuman and senseless. The commanding officer of the squad is Willie Stehauf, a drunken corporal. His constant humiliation, guerrilla attacks and endless raids through mosquito-infested swamps drive the soldiers into an even greater frenzy. And Proska asks the question: which is more important, duty or conscience? Who is the real enemy?
Production
The director and scriptwriter is Florian Gallenberger (Jon Rabe, Colony of Dignidad).
About the offscreen team:
- Screenplay: F. Gallenberger, Bernd Lange (Perpetrator: Germany, All That Remains, Filming in Palermo), Siegfried Lenz (A Minute of Silence);
- Producers: Stefan Reiser (Little Miss Dolittle), Felix Zakor (The Hunt for the Amber Room), Fabian Glubrecht (Salt and Fire), etc .;
- Editing: Marko Pav D'Auria (Partly Cloudy);
- Cinematography: Arthur Reinhart (Tristan and Isolde);
- Music: Antoni Lazarkevich (In the Dark);
- Artists: Robert Chesak ("A Short Film About Love"), Magdalena Deepon ("Man of Iron"), Aleksandra Klemens ("Obsession") and others.
Studio
Dreamtool Entertainment
Filming location: Poland.
Actors and roles
Cast:
- Leonie Benesh (Babylon Berlin, White Ribbon, Crown, Double) - Hildegard Roth;
- Rainer Bock (Work Without Authorship, Trails, Inglourious Basterds, Better Call Saul) - Sergeant Willie Stehauf;
- Yannis Niveoner ("East Wind 2", "The Collini Affair") - Walter Proska;
- Katharina Schüttler (Nico Fischer's Simple Difficulties, Heidi, Our Mothers, Our Fathers) - Maria Rogalski;
- Ulrich Tukur (Commissioner Rex, Lives of Others) - Ernst Menzel;
- Bjarne Medel (“How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)”) - Ferdinand Buffy Ellerbrock;
- Sebastian Urzendowski (Borgia, Babylon Berlin, The Counterfeiters) - Wolfgang Kürschner;
- Florian Lucas ("Don. Leader of the Mafia 2", "Good Bye, Lenin!") - Paul Zachariah;
- Alexander Bayer (Legends of Rita, Germany 83) - Martin Kunkel;
- Jochen Nickel ("Village Crocodiles 3", "Stalingrad", "Schindler's List") - builder.
Interesting Facts
Did you know that:
- The film is also known as The Defector.
- Despite the fact that the writer Siegfried Lenz supplemented and revised his novel several times, he never published it. The novel was published posthumously in 2016 under the title Defector and became a bestseller. NDR, Degeto and SWR released the book as a mini-series.