Diane Kruger in Fatih Akin’s Sentimental WWII Drama

In Amrum, Fatih Akin stages a sentimental conversation between himself and his mentor, the German director Hark Bohm. This project, which premiered at Cannes outside the main competition, was born of a collaboration between the two filmmakers: Bohm wrote the screenplay, which is based on memories of his youth in the waning days of World War II, and Akin directed (as well as helped edit the script). Indeed, one of the film’s intertitles calls Amrum a “Hark Bohm film by Fatih Akin.” 

That’s a useful note, because it announces Amrum as atypical of the Turkish-German filmmaker’s usual offerings. It doesn’t have the thriller textures of In the Fade or the grittiness of Head-On. With its focus on the experiences of a young boy, Amrum most closely aligns with Akin’s 2016 coming-of-age drama Goodbye Berlin.

But even that film, with its surreal elements, had a touch more edge. Amrum lives in the category of movies that confront the cruelty of Nazism through the perspective of children. It’s less cloying than The Boy in the Striped Pajamas but more earnest than JoJo Rabbit. The film stars returning Akin collaborator Diane Kruger as an anti-fascist farmer on the titular island off the German coast, and features a strong turn from Jasper Ole Billerbeck as protagonist Nanning. 

We meet Nanning in the summer of 1945, working alongside his friend Hermann (Klan Koppke) on a farm run by Tessa (Kruger). As they till the land, a horse and buggy filled with people pulls up and a brief conversation between Tessa and the driver reveals that those in the wagon are Russian-born German refugees who have been sent from Berlin. Tessa, fed up with the war and keenly aware of diminishing resources within this tight-knit community, denigrates the Nazi cause and hopes for an end to it all.

Ignorant to the implication of Tessa’s statement, Nanning alludes to it later at dinner with his mother Hille (Laura Tonke) and his aunt Ena (Lisa Hagmeister). He asks if his father will be home soon because the war is almost over. Hille, a fierce Nazi loyalist, is appalled by the question and the next day she reports Tessa to the Nazi authorities. Nanning loses his job and is labeled a rat by his peers. Akin uses this early moment to establish the tension between Amrum’s long-time, working-class residents and the Nazis transplanted there because of the war. 

Nanning, who is a member of the Hitler Youth corp and whose father plays a critical role within the Nazi party, doesn’t question how he’s seen by others until his mother reports Tessa to the authorities. But still, he remains loyal to her. The drama in Amrum kicks off when Hille, pregnant with her fourth child, becomes depressed by Hitler’s diminishing influence. At her lowest point, she off-handedly wishes for white bread, butter and honey, and Nanning, a child who wants his mother to feel better, takes it as a mandate. He sets off on a series of quests to find these rare goods. His adventures take him across the island, where he interacts with an assortment of people with different political views. He also comes to understand more about his family’s personal history and the depth of his mother and father’s cruelty. 

Billerbeck’s performance is Amrum’s emotional engine. The actor channels Nanning’s initial naïveté through sorrowful eyes that grow more steely as his adventures harden him to harsh realities. He captures the adolescent desire to fit in and balances that well with the grief that comes from realizing your parents are not who you thought they were.

Kruger’s role in Amrum is minor but affecting. She plays Tessa, a potato farmer, as a kind of counterpart to Hille. Unlike Nanning’s mother, Tessa doesn’t blindly support the Nazis and doesn’t see Hitler as the path to Germany’s salvation. There’s a groundedness to her character, who embodies a rare kind of moral clarity. 

Amrum is hardly a piece of fascist apologia nor does it try to build a sympathetic portrait of Nazis. Akin uses a child’s perspective to wrestle with a nation’s conception of itself in the waning days of brutality. Still, one does wonder if the message about the Third Reich’s rotten core gets lost in the classic, edenic cinematography (by Karl Walter Lindenlaub). Akin leans into a gorgeous visual language that evokes nostalgia. He trades frenetic jump cuts and hectic camera angles that define films like Head-On for meditative wide shots that bask in the scale and beauty of the island. Some of the most compelling scenes in Amrum focus on the economy of conflict and how war turns basic commodities — eggs, flour and even sugar — into luxury goods. 

As Nanning procures these items for his mother, evidence of the Nazis’ weakened authority mounts. His mother’s depression worsens — especially at the news of Hitler’s death — and the young boy feels intensifying pressure to help alleviate it. But the more he learns about his parents and the island, the more he must contend with his own sense of morality. What does it mean to lose faith in one’s role models and form an identity outside their ideological purview? It’s a conventional narrative drama, but Amrum approaches this question with commendable tenderness.