My Best Friend Anne Frank

Two friends in Amsterdam: Hannah Goslar and Anne Frank. Hannah is orderly, Anne likes to be noticed. Both families fled Germany and settled in the same neighbourhood. Then the Franks disappear one night, and Hannah believes her friend has gone to Switzerland. Two years later they meet again at Bergen-Belsen, on either side of a wire fence. The film is not about the diary; it looks from the point of view of someone who knew the girl who wrote it. It moves between two timelines, the colour of the school years and the grey of the camp. What gets talked about at the fence is not friendship but food. Ben Sombogaart directed. It is a Dutch production for Netflix. Hannah Goslar was a real person who survived the war and recounted that meeting at the fence for years, which is the documentary basis of the story. Who it is for: anyone drawn to Second World War narratives and to seeing Anne Frank's story from another angle. Who it is not for: anyone wanting hard realism. The camp sections look too clean, the shifts between timelines are crudely made, and some characters exist only to serve a function.