When Diane Kruger started acting, she had clear rules about the roles she would play.
“I didn’t want to be in a World War II movie,” Krueger says. “When I started working, I didn’t want to be pigeonholed as a German actress. It was a natural casting choice for me.”
Krueger softened his stance and memorably played a German movie star who is an Allied underground agent in Quentin Tarantino’s other historical film, Inglourious Basterds.
“I had to help kill Hitler,” Kruger says. “It was great not only for me, but for my country and the world.”
She returns to the World War II setting in Amrum, a historical drama about Nanning Böhm, a boy whose Nazi family struggles to come to terms with the fall of the regime. The film, released in the United States this month, reunites Krueger with director Fatih Akin, who directed the 2017 thriller In the Fade, which won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival.
“I’ve worked with some great directors, but Fati is a filmmaker who gives you wings in the best way,” Kruger says. “He pushes me really hard, but it’s okay because I have trust with him. I’ve never experienced anything like that before.”
In “Amram,” Kruger chose the role himself. For her supporting role, she chooses Tessa, a farmer who employs Nannin while revealing her opposition to the Nazis.
“Tessa felt like a rebellious person,” Krueger says over Zoom from her home in Europe. “She’s the kind of person I would have wanted to be if I had lived in that era. And I come from a rural background, and my grandmother was always in the fields. When I was a kid, we had summer jobs hauling corn, raking hay, picking strawberries.”
For Akin, having a close collaborator like Krueger on set helped because “Amrum” was a bold challenge for the German-Turkish filmmaker. Nanning is based on the experiences of Hulk Böhm, one of Germany’s leading actors, directors and producers. The two had collaborated on In the Fade, which Akin directed from a script he wrote with Baum. Initially, it was planned that Böhm would direct “Amrum” and that the two would write the screenplay. But Boehm, who died in November at the age of 86, had been in failing health.
“I’m not a hired director,” Akin says. “I had to work on this material until it became very personal and close to me, and until it became an auteur’s film.”
Akin said he focused on Nannin’s tangled relationship with his mother, an ardent supporter of Hitler who fell into deep depression after the Führer’s suicide. “Amrum” ultimately asks difficult questions about collusion.
“I don’t think people are responsible for the actions of their parents, but there is some kind of blood connection between them,” Akin says. “It’s a trauma that Germany is still living with.”
As for Kruger, she was motivated to revisit this painful chapter in her country’s history because of its resonance with the present. “Amrum” was released at a time when radical political movements are gaining momentum and authoritarianism is on the rise around the world.
“I’m at a point in my life where I’m thinking about what kind of world my daughter is going to grow up in,” Krueger said. “There’s a sense that history is repeating itself. I feel hopeless about what’s happening in the world. I feel like I don’t have the power to change anything. And when I become a mother, I feel like I’m trying to explain to my child what’s happening and why this is happening.” It’s very difficult to explain to people. When I was a teenager, I remember asking my grandfather, “How did we go to war? Why did this happen?” I’m still trying to understand everything. ”
