Amen.
Short description
Amen. is a historical drama about Kurt Gerstein, a chemist and SS officer who learns that the poison gas he helped develop is being used to murder Jews in the death camps. In the midst of the Second World War, he decides to expose what he knows. A young Jesuit priest, Riccardo Fontana, joins his effort, and together they try to reach the Vatican and persuade church officials to speak out. Their appeals meet resistance, and the film follows the two men as they try to alert diplomats and religious authorities to what is happening.
Costa-Gavras directed and co-wrote the screenplay with Jean-Claude Grumberg. Released in 2002, the film came after a run of features including Z, Missing and Mad City. Ulrich Tukur plays Gerstein, Mathieu Kassovitz plays Fontana, and the cast includes Ulrich Mühe, Michel Duchaussoy, Marcel Iureș and Ion Caramitru, with 109 credited performers in all. The production was a European and American co-production shot across several countries.
Audiences received the film positively, with a rating of 7.2 out of 10 on IMDb from around 16,000 votes, and 7 out of 10 on TMDB from about 390 votes. Critics were less enthusiastic according to a critics' score of 6.1 out of 10 from 49 reviews, indicating a gap between professional and audience response.
What's left behind the scenes
- The Vatican did not grant permission to film in its buildings. Ultimately, director and screenwriter Costa-Gavras found a building of the necessary size in Bucharest, the capital of Romania (referring to the Palace of Parliament, the largest building in Europe). Some street scenes were filmed in the Mogosoaia Palace ensemble, built in 1692-1702, approximately 14 km northwest of Bucharest.
- Marina Berti's last role.
- Kurt Gerstein (played by Ulrich Tukur) witnessed corpses being thrown into mass graves, and his driver reported that the crematoria could not keep up with burning the bodies. This was indeed the case: in 1942, the 18-meter-high furnaces for burning bodies operated non-stop. They were designed to incinerate from 1,200 to 4,800 bodies per day, or from 360,000 to 1,400,000 bodies per year, operating 300 days a year.
- Stefan Lux (played by Ovidiu Cuncea in the film) was a Czech Jew, a journalist, who committed suicide in the League of Nations building in Geneva on July 3, 1936, hoping to draw the world’s attention to the danger of persecution of Jews in Germany. He shot himself, shouting “C'est le dernier coup” (“This is the last blow”).
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
