Calm at Sea

October 1941. Eighteen months into the occupation, young Communist résistants shoot a German officer in Nantes. In reprisal, Hitler demands that a hundred and fifty Frenchmen be killed; those chosen are mostly young men taken to share the politics of the assassins. The names are to come out of the Choiseul camp, where opponents of the occupation are held, and a thirty-five-year-old French sub-prefect is ordered to make the selection. Although the parish priest appeals to their conscience, both the German army and the French officials carry out the order. Among those shot is the seventeen-year-old Guy Môquet. Volker Schlöndorff directed, working from the text of Ernst Jünger, the German officer and writer who had been ordered to record the events hour by hour.