Having won major attention – including an Oscar nomination – with his 2004 look at the latter days of Adolf Hitler in the meme-spawning Downfall, Oliver Hirschbiegel tried his hand at Hollywood with the unsuccessful likes of The Invasion and Diana. Now he’s back in a Hitler-adjacent story for World War II drama 13 Minutes, which has a trailer online.
The film explores the compelling true-life story of Georg Elser (played here by Christian Friedel), a German carpenter who had spent most of his life largely eschewing politics. But, sickened by what he had seen of the Nazi regime and its treatment of his fellow countrymen and others, he swore to assassinate Hitler, carefully working on a bomb plot for a Nazi convention in Munich in 1939.
We obviously – historical spoiler alert! – know that his attempt failed, but the drama’s real interest is in looking at why a man who had shown so little interest in politics would be driven to such lengths, and the consequences that came his way when he was caught.
With Katharine Schüttler, Burghart Klaussner and Johann von Bülow also in the cast, 13 Minutes will arrive in the UK on July 17 and is initially scheduled to screen exclusively in Picturehouse Cinemas before a more general release on July 24.