From Hilde, with Love

KinoFest 2025

German Film Festival

Red Carpet Cinema 3, Shangri-la Plaza

Towards the ending, there is a very brief scene which still haunts me. It added significant impact to an otherwise average narration of the true life story of Hilde Coppi, an anti fascist advocate in Berlin during the second World War. Well she only became active through her husband, Hans.

It is the year 1941, a shy medical assistant Hilde falls in love with Hans, a fervent activist involved in the underground Anti Nazi resistance movement known as the Red Orchestra. They get married and soon enough Hilde is with child. In the summer of 1942,  they are both arrested by the Gestapo for their subversive activities. They are charged with high treason and are sentenced to death. In prison, she is handcuffed to the bed and gives birth under harsh conditions. Hans is executed first (even though it isn't shown in the film). Hilde spends the rest of her life sentence in prison with her infant son.

The film unfolds in a non linear manner showing scenes of their idyllic summers engaging in their anti war campaign interspersed with dark, gloomy sequences of the Hilde's hardships in prison. Presented with hardly any segment of violence portraying the known atrocities of the Nazis, nor any political leanings, the film is too clinical and in essence minimizes the horrors that actually occurred during the brutally pervasive reign of Nazism in the second World War.

 
It also tends to be too claustrophobic because it is merely confined within the prison walls. Even the guards at the prisoners camp were not very 'strict'. Their activism was simply depicted as putting up anti Nazi stickers on lamp posts, distributing anti war leaflets on public transports and communicating clandestinely with the families of Russian-held POWs using hand held radios. So for someone who is not familiar with the monstrosities perpetuated by the Gestapo and the Nazis during World War 2, it would seem too feeble to even merit incarceration.

Nevertheless, that scene which haunted me long after I left the theater was powerful because it put everything into perspective. It shows the women prisoners waiting outside a door for their execution. Some of them are praying, others are visibly distraught and crying while some are stoic. It was Hilde's turn to enter the room. Inside there are three officers in military uniforms seated behind a long table. An aide reads out loud, her name Hilde Coppi and the crime she is guilty of. Suddenly a curtain is drawn! Her hands bound, she lies face down, then strapped to the guillotine. In one harrowing jolt, the guillotine blade drops, ending her life instantly.  All of these unfold in just a few minutes even seconds, leaving you hardly any moment to fully grasp what happened. No hysterics, no drama, just a straightforward death scene. A forceful manner to end a film, pun intended.