A Hidden Life (dir. Terrence Malick, 2019) offers a fictionalised depiction of the life of Austrian conscientious objector Franz Jägerstätter (1907-1943), who was executed in 1943 for his refusal to serve in the Wehrmacht and beatified by the Catholic Church in 2007. In his film, the American auteur director presents Jägerstätter (played by August Diehl) as a timeless model for the importance of taking a moral stand in totalitarian regimes, thereby creating a work of ‘multidirectional memory’ (Rothberg 2009). Malick has brought Jägerstätter to a new generation previously unfamiliar with his story. Examining the film’s use of music, depiction of the Austrian landscape, and citation of Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935), as well as bringing A Hidden Life into dialogue with Axel Corti’s earlier film treatment of Jägerstätter’s biography in The Refusal (1971), the lecture will analyse what is both gained and lost in Malick’s transnational cinematic portrayal.

Katya Krylova is Senior Lecturer in German, Film and Visual Culture at the University of Aberdeen.

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