Heinrich Böll's 100th Birthday

Plot

On December 21, 2017, the writer Heinrich Böll would have turned 100. In the Federal Republic, Böll, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972, was tremendously present and well-known. His criticism of media hectoring, his commitment to peace and his solidarity with the weaker made him, the writer, a kind of moral authority. Whoever wants to get to know him anew today - 33 years after his death - discovers a personality with amazingly modern, timelessly topical sides, with themes and concerns that today, far more than 30 years after his death, have a completely new meaning again: Anti-fascism, pacifism, the fight against media agitation, personal freedom, solidarity and comprehensive humanity. In Tina Srowig's documentary, Böll's son René, his publisher Reinhold Neven DuMont and friends and companions recall important stages, great successes, turbulent conflicts and very human, moving and amusing moments in the writer's life.

Related Movies

• 
  One Step From Holiness (2019)

  ✗ Skip it

  Documentary

  A short doc. movie about Bono meeting with John Paul II.
• Wolverine: Devil of the North? (2001)

  ✗ Skip it

  Documentary
• 
  Night and Fog (1956)

  ✓ Watch it

  Documentary · History

  Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.
• 
  Stop Making Sense (1984)

  ✓ Watch it

  Documentary · Music

  A concert film documenting Talking Heads at the height of their popularity, on tour for their 1983 album "Speaking in Tongues." The band takes the stage one by one and is joined by a cadre of guest musicians for a career-spanning and cinematic performance that features creative choreography and visuals.
• 
  Shoah (1985)

  ✓ Watch it

  Documentary · History

  Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.
• 
  Isle of Flowers (1989)

  ✓ Watch it

  Documentary

  A tomato is planted, harvested and sold at a supermarket, but it rots and ends up in the trash. But it doesn’t end there: Isle of Flowers follows it up until its real end, among animals, trash, women and children. And then the difference between tomatoes, pigs and human beings becomes clear.