ELSER – ER HÄTTE DIE WELT VERÄNDERT

Georg Elser was a man who could have changed world history and saved millions of human lives. If only he had had 13 more minutes. With 13 more minutes, the bomb he had personally assembled would have torn apart Adolf Hitler and his henchmen. But this was not to be, and on 8 November 1939, Hitler left the scene of the attempted assassination earlier than expected – leaving Elser to fail catastrophically.

Who was this man who recognized the danger emanating from Hitler sooner than many others, who took action when everybody else, including the German generals, meekly followed orders or kept silent? What did he see which our parents or grandparents did not see or want to see? The man who told his torturers to their faces that he wanted to prevent the bloodshed of the imminent world war?

13 MINUTES relates the background of the failed attack in the Bürgerbräukeller and paints a suspenseful, emotional portrait of the resistance fighter who was called “Georgie” in his hometown. A story that takes us from his early years in the Swabian Alps – when National Socialism arrived in his hometown – to his last days at the Dachau concentration camp, where he was killed shortly before the end of the war at the command of the one whom he himself wanted to kill, Adolf Hitler.

Director

OLIVER HIRSCHBIEGEL scored a sensational success with the award-winning feature film THE EXPERIMENT (2001). His third feature DOWNFALL (2004) was nominated for an Academy Award^® in 2005 in the category Best Foreign Language Film. Also active in tele­vision, a selection of his other features in­cludes: MY LAST FILM (2002), EIN GANZ GEWÖHNLICHER JUDE (2005), INVASION (2007), FIVE MINUTES OF HEAVEN (2009), and DIANA (2013).

photos © Lucky Bird Pictures/Bernd Schuller