A shy young woman fights the Nazis in ‘From Hilde, With Love’

BERLIN – The new movie, From Hilde, With Love, by Andreas Dresen, which just premiered at the 74th Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival, tells the true story of Hilde Coppi, a heroic resistance fighter against the Nazis during World War II. Now that antisemitism is on the rise around the world, it is an especially fitting time to show a movie about a brave soul who risked all to free her country from the Nazis.

Coppi doesn’t fit the stereotype of a hero. In a brilliant, understated performance by Babylon Berlin star Liv Lisa Fries, Coppi is portrayed as a shy, bookish young woman, devoted to her mother, who chose to do the right thing out of deep personal conviction. A clerk at an insurance office, she quickly moved from transporting secret documents to transmitting coded messages, as part of a group known as the Red Orchestra.

The group sent information from Soviet broadcasts about German prisoners of war to their families and also passed information about the state of the German military to Moscow. In the course of this work, she fell in love with and married Hans Coppi (Johannes Hegemann) and became pregnant, giving birth to a son in prison after her arrest.

Hilde was executed in 1943, but her son, Hans, survived and, now in his 80s, joined the cast of the film on the red carpet at the premiere at the Berlinale Palast.  

The movie avoids many of the cliches associated with fictional depictions of resistance fighters. Hilde, Hans, and other members of the group express fear and even doubt about the importance of their work, although they continue on their path. The film is especially moving as it shows Coppi’s final triumph – that she nurses her baby and makes sure he is thriving in their few months together before she is executed. Her love for her child keeps her going in those last difficult weeks and is an inspiration to fellow inmates and even to her guards.

Press conference

At a press conference, Laila Stieler, the screenwriter, said: “[Hilde] is such a sensitive person, perhaps too sensitive at times. She carried out these heroic deeds but they came naturally to her because of her decency.”

Dresen described Coppi as “a decent and brave woman” and said he wanted to showcase her humanity. “We live in a time where we have to make sure that we remain decent, that we remain human.”