Charlotte Salomon

A train brought Charlotte Salomon to France, where her grandparents live. Her parents meant her to be secure there, away form the Nazis who treated Germany. In the countryside she started to put down her fateful life in paintings. In Berlin, where the Nazi-terror against the Jews had already started, she had had to leave the Academy of Arts. In her father’s house she met Daberlohn, a voice teacher, who was few years older than Charlotte and vowing for her stepmother Paulinka. Charlotte fell in love with Daberlohn, who accepted her enthusiastic, playful love. But the conflict with Paulinka made her relationship difficult. Paulinka liked Charlotte and tried to help her with her traumatic experiences due to her mother’s suicide. When Germany became too dangerous, they make Charlotte leave the country and Daberlohn. After Charlotte has got to know the truth about her mother’s suicide and after she became witness of her grandmother’s suicide in France she committed herself to the Germans. This film tells the fictionalised story of a haunted family and a young girl’s great love for the voice teacher with Faustian ambitions. It tells how and why she had to paint, how she found the strength to work under strong psychical pressure. What is the significance of the program for input? Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943) was a young Jewish paintress. She lived in Berlin and escaped to Southern France. There she was caught and in Auschwitz she was killed at the age of 26. Her life would have remained unknown to us, if she had no left more than 1.000 paintings in gouache which were found after the war. The films is a German-Dutch co-production which will be shown first in the cinema.