Memory Hotel
Heinrich Sabl
- 2025
- Germany, France
- Animation / Drama
- 1h40mn
- Original version with French subtitles
- Color
Exclusive
Germany at the end of the war. Nazi officer Scharf, young Hitlerian Beckmann, Sophie, five years old and her parents have found shelter in a hotel to escape the Red Army. Her mother is killed by Scharf, and her father by Wassily, a Soviet paratrooper. Years later, now a teenager, Sophie still works in the hotel as a cook for the Russian army, while Beckmann lives hidden in the basements…
The fate of German civilians after 1945 has rarely been explored in cinema. The fact that this is a fully stop-motion film, crafted over twenty-five years by a filmmaker deeply passionate about his subject, commands admiration. An impressive epic of confinement with clear symbolic weight, Sophie’s fate—caught between three men who each seek to possess her, speaks of all women and all wars. A striking portrait of a resilient and resistant woman.
Credits
- Voiceover by : Steffi Kühnert
- Screenplay : Heinrich Sabl
- Photography : Heinrich Sabl
- Editing : Enrico Basl
- Music by : Thomas Mävers, Erik Lautenschläger
- Production : Philippe Bober, Heinrich Sabl
