100
Los Angeles Times by Kenneth Turan
It's intelligent, provocative and intensely dramatic. Its subject matter may be tough but it is as powerfully authentic as anyone could want.
A Woman in Berlin (Anonyma - Eine Frau in Berlin)
Critic Rating
(read reviews)User Rating
- Germany,
- Poland
- 2008
- · 131m
Director
Max Färberböck
Cast
Nina Hoss,
Evgeniy Sidikhin,
Juliane Köhler,
August Diehl,
Irm Hermann,
Rüdiger Vogler
Genre
Drama,
War,
History
A nameless woman keeps a diary as the Russians invade Berlin in the spring of 1945. She is in her early 30s, a patriotic journalist with international credentials; her husband, Gerd, a writer, is an officer at the Russian front. She speaks Russian and, for a day or two after the invasion, keeps herself safe, but then the rapes begin. She resolves to control her fate.
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What are critics saying?
100
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
That the film manages to be understated, calm and intelligent in spite of its wrenching subject matter is perhaps its most impressive accomplishment. In avoiding sensationalism, it feels very close to the truth.
90
Salon by Andrew O'Hehir
A distinctive achievement, a World War II movie unlike any other and one of the few films ever to address a topic that makes almost everyone want to look away: What happens to women in wartime.
80
Village Voice
One of the best of a new breed of indigenous movies prying open the Pandora's box of German suffering in World War II, A Woman in Berlin takes on the mass rape of German women by victorious Russian soldiers entering the country in 1945.
80
Village Voice by Ella Taylor
One of the best of a new breed of indigenous movies prying open the Pandora's box of German suffering in World War II, A Woman in Berlin takes on the mass rape of German women by victorious Russian soldiers entering the country in 1945.
78
Austin Chronicle by Marc Savlov
A Woman in Berlin is like a tour through the blast-cratered psyche of two colliding cultures, each with its own nightmarish tales to tell or acts of violence to experience.
75
New York Post by V.A. Musetto
A Woman in Berlin, which is based on an anonymously written memoir of the same name, serves also as a testimony to women who put men in their place.
75
Washington Post by Ann Hornaday
Joins such wonderful recent films as "The Lives of Others" and "The Baader Meinhof Complex" as a clear-eyed portrait of a highly charged chapter in Germany's history, a history that once again proves rewarding fodder for an alert artistic imagination.
75
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
The film is well-acted, with restraint, by Hoss and Sidikhin. The writer and director, Max Faerberboeck, employs a level gaze and avoids for the most part artificial sentimentality. The physical production is convincing.
75
San Francisco Chronicle by Walter Addiego
A harrowing story about the will to survive amid the most brutal conditions imaginable.
70
NPR by Mark Jenkins
A Woman in Berlin doesn't justify retribution, but in such moments it does clarify the horrible logic of vengeance.
60
Chicago Reader by Andrea Gronvall
Director Max Farberbock (Aimee & Jaguar) mainly avoids graphic depictions of sexual assault, but that only increases the tension in this austere, claustrophobic drama.
50
Variety by Eddie Cockrell
A stately, intermittently gripping, ultimately overlong drama.
50
The Hollywood Reporter
The film ends up relying on stating a basic situation over and over rather than developing any sort of dramatic story concerning recognizable human beings, at least until things get moving a little faster in its second hour.
40
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
Unfortunately, Färberböck never gives us reason enough to sit through such unremitting punishment. Though the story is based in truth, an emotionally removed Hoss feels more like a symbol than an actual person, while her detached narration keeps us at further remove.
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