Nicole Kidman's new film, The Reader, has been denied permission to shoot at the Nazi concentration camp of Sachsenhausen, on the basis that only documentaries are allowed to film there because the site is a memorial to all who died there.
"Former concentration camp sites are cemeteries — it's just not appropriate to use them as film sets," said Horst Seferens, the curator of the site. The filmmakers had asked to use the place for one key scene, but will now have to find an alternative location.
The film, directed by Steven Daldry, is set in contemporary German but includes flashbacks to just after World War II, when Kidman plays an older woman who conducts a passionate affair with a very young man. Ralph Fiennes also stars - although not, we're guessing, as the much younger man.