“Hotel Auschwitz”: Film Screening and Conversation

NYU’s Center for European and Mediterranean Studies and Deutsches Haus at NYUpresent a screening of the film Hotel Auschwitz (2018). The screening will be followed by a conversation about the many questions this thought-provoking film raises. The participants will be the film’s director, Cornelius Schwalm; the film’s co-producer Katharina Bellena; the actor Patrick von Blume; and Christian Martin, the current Max Weber Chair in German and European Studies at NYU, who will moderate the conversation.

About the film:

Hotel Auschwitz. Germany. 2018. Directed by Cornelius Schwalm. Produced by Katharina Bellena and Cornelius Schwalm. Screenplay by Cornelius Schwalm and Christiane Lilge. With Cornelius Schwalm (Martin), Franziska Petri (Sabine), Patrick von Blume (Holger), and Katharina Bellena (Goska). In German, Polish, and Romanian with English subtitles. 75 min.

Hotel Auschwitz picks apart a theater troupe, which fails a test of character when faced with what had once been the largest extermination camp in the world. It is a biting comedy about careerism, desire, dependency, and the role of the political – or the lack thereof – in private life. With dark humor and stifling intimacy, the film tells a mercilessly revealing story about the mechanisms of power in the culture industry and the impossibility of dealing appropriately with the German role in the Holocaust. The idea, concept, and screenplay are all by Cornelius Schwalm, who also acts in the film. Assistance in writing the screenplay was provided by Christiane Lilge. The fictional story was enriched by the actual experiences of the cast, who also developed large sections of the dialogue. People and events in Auschwitz were also integrated in documentary fashion into the work. The film was produced without institutional support by Katharina Bellena (CollaboratorsFilms) and Cornelius Schwalm (MariaKron).