The resistance they don't teach in history class — Cologne's forgotten rebels speak.
The film focuses on Cologne citizens of different social backgrounds and political views, who took different paths to their common anti-fascist commitment in the Cologne National Committee for a Free Germany. They describe the events in Cologne before 1933, the mood of the population when Hitler came to power and the proletarian resistance struggle - despite growing fascist terror.
Direction
Schubert lets survivors talk — no narration, no cheap emotional scoring.
Production
Rare 1976 access to aging resistance fighters, many now lost to time.
Director
Dietrich Schubert
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made in 1976 West Germany, this emerged during the Vergangenheitsbewältigung ('coming to terms with the past') movement, when government-funded films finally let leftist resistance stories compete with Holocaust-centered narratives.
Dietrich Schubert was blacklisted from GDR filmmaking for formalist tendencies, making this West German production his ironic refuge — a film about communist resistance, directed by an East German exile, funded by capitalist television.
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