Born in Berlin in 1938 and trained for a career in medicine, Michael Verhoeven developed a unique voice in postwar Germany. While some denied and others chose to forget, Verhoeven risked popular opinion by daring to tell the truth. He was the first West German director to raise the issues of German resistance against the Nazis in The White Rose, and how modern-day citizens are repressing the truth in The Nasty Girl.
Verhoeven completed his trilogy by telling the miraculous and true story of how one woman saved herself from deportation in My Mother's Courage. While the 50th anniversary of the fall of Hitler was marked with messages of healing between Germans and Jews, Daniel Goldhagen's recently published book, Hitler's Willing Executioners emphasizes the complicity of ordinary Germans with the war. By contrast, Verhoeven tells the little known stories of resistance and of modern-day Germans seeking a relationship with the past.
- San Francisco Jewish Film Festival
The National Center For Jewish Film
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