Fresno Filmworks' 2nd Annual World Film Festival
Friday, Saturday, Sunday
May 5, 6, 7, 2006

Sophie Scholl - The Final Days
Sunday May 7, 2006
7pm
The Tower Theatre
815 E. Olive Avenue, Fresno
Festival passes:
$40 - Festival Pass includes all films & invitation to Opening Night Champagne Reception
$20 - Opening Night Film & Opening Night Champagne Reception
$10 - General tickets
$8 - Student & Senior tickets

Synopsis

Winner of Best Director and Best Actress awards at the Berlin International Film Festival, as well as Germany's submission this year for the Foreign Language Academy Award, this taut and gripping drama re-creates the last six days of Germany's most famous anti-Nazi heroine. During World War II a group of Munich college students mount an underground resistance movement, called the White Rose, aimed at countering Nazi propaganda. Its sole female member, Sophie Scholl (Julia Jentsch) is caught in 1943 trying to distribute pamphlets on campus, along with her brother Hans (Fabian Hinrichs). Director Marc Rothemund follows historical record in recounting Scholl's capture, questioning and sentencing, and some of the most fascinating scenes involve an ongoing ideological debate between the prisoner and her Gestapo interrogator (Alexander Held). "Jentsch is terrific," wrote Variety, and her magnetic performance gives this celebrated historical figure both immediacy and resonance.

Directed by Marc Rothemund
2005, Germany
In German with English subtitles
Not rated, 35mm; 120 min.

Reviews for Sophie Scholl - The Final Day

"Julia Jentsch gives a brilliantly nuanced performance as Sophie, a fun-loving girl who likes marmalade and Schubert but also happens to be a rare beacon of conscience in totalitarianism's dark night." -- Leslie Camhi, Village Voice

"The film holds us rapt not through narrative suspense but through the eerie and demanding spectacle of profound moral courage, of a powerless good person in collision with absolute evil." -- Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

Advance tickets may be purchased at the following locations: Fig Garden Books in Fig Garden Village Shopping Center, The Movies located at 1435 N. Van Ness and the Tower Theatre Box Office, and all TicketMaster outlets, www.ticketmaster.com or at 485-TIXS

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