Is Dresden Burning?
by Andre Soares
"German filmmakers have tackled the touchy subject of whether the Allied firebombing of Dresden at the end of World War Two was a ‘war crime’ with a carefully balanced melodrama that got its worldwide premiere on Monday.
"Showing the German point of view of anything in World War Two is always likely to cause a stir - and that’s precisely what the makers of Dresden said they want to achieve.
"Dresden, which premiered at the European Film Market at the Berlin Film Festival, quickly reopened old wounds about what many Germans privately call a war crime - and even act of terror." Erik Kirschbaum via Reuters.
Directed by Roland Suso Richter, the made-for-TV miniseries Dresden stars Marie Bäumer, Susanne Bormann, Michael Brandner, Andreas Günther, Jürgen Heinrich, Heiner Lauterbach, and John Light. 35,000 people died as a result of the fire-bombing of the German city.
When I was in Dresden in the early 1990s, I visited the ruins of a church, left standing as a symbol of the horrors of war. That skeleton of that building remains one of the most haunting images I carry in my memory. “Good” war or “bad” war, the incinerated bodies and ruined cities are ultimately all the same.
List of the British Academy of Film 2006 nominees
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