Diplomacy

Streaming video - 2014

As the Allies march toward Paris in the summer of 1944, Hitler gives orders that the French capital should not fall into enemy hands, or if it does, then ‘only as a field of rubble’. The person assigned to carry out this barbaric act is Wehrmacht commander of Greater Paris, General Dietrich von Choltitz, who already has mines planted on the Eiffel Tower, in the Louvre and Notre Dame and on the bridges over the Seine. Nothing should be left as a reminder of the city’s former glory. However, at dawn on 25 August, Swedish Consul General Raoul Nordling steals into German headquarters through a secret underground tunnel and there starts a tension-filled game of cat and mouse as Nordling tries to persuade Choltitz to abandon his plan. In th...is riveting adaptation of the play by Cyril Gély, the great Volker Schlöndorff (Academy Award winner for *The Tin Drum*) has created a psychologically elaborate game of political manners between two highly contrasting characters. Official Selection at the **Berlin International Film Festival.** Winner of the César Award for Best Adaptation at the **César Awards.** *"...thrills come not from knowing what will happen, but from watching the cagey choreography of two acrobatic minds." - Michael O'Sullivan, **The Washington Post*** more