British actor Clive Owen has starred in many big-name productions, notably King Arthur (2004), Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2006) and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017), and he’s slated to star in the latest from Stefan Ruzowitzky. Kristallnacht, which is scheduled to begin filming next year, will center around Germany just prior to the Second World War, with a focus on the pogroms carried out against the country’s Jewish population on the night of November 9-10, 1938.
Following the assassination of German attaché Ernst vom Rath in Paris, France, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party urged the populace to ransack businesses, homes and places of worship frequented and owned by Jewish people. Some 30,000 Jewish men were also rounded up and sent to concentration camps, marking the first time the government had arrested people because they were Jewish.
Given the amount of destruction caused, the night was dubbed Kristallnacht – “Night of Broken Glass”. Afterward, the German government ordered the Jewish population pay a one billion Reichsmark “atonement tax” and enacted a number of anti-Jewish laws.
Written by Ruzowitzky and Julius Grütze, Kristallnacht will follow real-life police lieutenant Wilhelm Krützfeld, portrayed by Owen, while the pogroms occur throughout Berlin. Amid the chaos, Krützfeld warns Jewish citizens of what’s happening and saves the New Synagogue, on Oranienburger Straße, from being destroyed.
For his actions, Krützfeld got away with just a verbal warning from his superior. He went on to be an ally of Jewish residents in the neighborhoods he patrolled, with him and other officers warning them of their impending arrests. He was later transferred, before retiring in 1943 “for health reasons.”
Kristallnacht was announced by Benaroya Pictures CEO and International Film Trust Co-Founder Michael Benaroya, who will serve as the movie’s producers alongside Marcelo Gandola, Danny Krausz and Daniel Zuta.
In a statement to Variety, Ruzowitzky said, “This is a movie about the mechanics of a genocide: In the so-called Kristallnacht, a somewhat vague antisemitism turned into violence, looting, murder, paving the way to Auschwitz. But Kristallnacht is also the true story of constable Wilhelm Krützfeld, one of the few Germans who stood up against evil and injustice, proving that everyone can defy doom. It takes an intact moral compass and a little bit of courage.”
Benaroya added, “The moment we were brought this true story, we knew it was going to be an important film. And as we went through multiple drafts over the years, Krützfeld’s heroic actions only became more and more relevant to our times. Partnering with Stefan and Clive feels like the perfect culmination in our extensive efforts to tell the unflinching story of a man who risked everything to preserve his humanity in a world gone mad.”
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Principal photography for Kristallnacht will begin in Austria in 2025.
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