"THE CASE OF JOHANNA LANGEFELD" WINS AT THE GREEK FESTIVAL
The documentary film by Władysław Jurkow and Geburg Rohde-Dahl won the ex-aequo award for the best international documentary film at the Aegean Docs International Documentary Film Festival.
The Aegean Docs International Documentary Film Festival is entirely dedicated to documentary cinema. The organisers try to invite films from all over the world to their festival, as well as to create a friendly atmosphere for the representatives of the film industry. Discussion panels, film retrospectives and masterclasses of recognised documentary-film makers await the audience of the Greek islands, where the festival is held.
The award-winning documentary film, "The Case of Johanna Langefeld" described as a documentary thriller, tells the little-known story of the commandant of women's concentration camps, SS Oberaufseherin Johanna Langefeld who escaped from the Montelupich prison in Krakow in 1946. The authors of the film found the information that the SS woman was helped in her escape by her former prisoners who survived the camp in Ravensbrück. In 1942, Johanna Langefeld organised the women's concentration camp in Auschwitz and was the first one to manage it. The SS woman was to be tried in the trial of the staff of the Auschwitz German concentration camp in the court in Krakow. The story was kept secret for many years because if it had been revealed, both the former SS woman and the Polish women who organised her escape would have faced punishment. The mysterious events of those years are the starting point of the story told in the film, and the investigation carried out by the authors is the main narrative plot of the film. In order to explain the secret of Johanna Langefeld's escape from the Polish prison, the film-makers set out on a journey into the past. The Polish-German film expedition reaches materials and witness accounts which lead them to surprising discoveries about the protagonists of this story and the historical circumstances.
You can find more information on the festival's official website.