Führer und Verführer
German drama about the work of Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. His incendiary propaganda machine played a crucial role in radicalising Hitler’s supporters and misleading the German people.
FÜHRER UND VERFÜHRER (Leader and Seducer) turns the spotlight on the ‘father of fake news’, Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, who accompanied Hitler during the seven years from the ‘Anschluss’ of Austria in March 1938 to the murder and suicide in the Führerbunker in May 1945. While Hitler is at the height of his power, Goebbels is the creator of the pictures of the flag-waving crowds and of the anti-Semitic films JUD SÜSS and DER EWIGE JUDE that prepare the people for the mass murder of the Jews.
After years of in-depth research, Lang made a film consisting of fictional scenes from Goebbels' private life – showing him as a frustrated father of six children - interspersed with real archival material, and interviews with Holocaust survivors. Through this interweaving, Lang wants to show that what we think we know about Hitler and Goebbels is partly based on their own (dis)information machine.
FÜHRER UND VERFÜHRER depicts how targeted use of language and images seduced and misled an entire nation. A phenomenon that is painfully relevant given the current rise of the far-right in Europe. (rs)