Rosenstrasse

New York, 2000. Ruth's husband dies and she goes into strict Jewish mourning, which baffles her children. A relative arrives at the house with a photograph: Berlin, Ruth at eight, and a woman standing beside her. Her daughter Hannah goes to Berlin to find that woman. Lena Fischer is ninety now. What she describes is a week in 1943, when Jewish men married to German women were held in a building on Rosenstrasse and the women gathered outside it every day. Margarethe von Trotta directs; two hours and sixteen minutes. The event is real: around two thousand men were held and were released at the beginning of March. Historians do not agree on whether the protest is what freed them; one line of argument holds that these men were never going to be deported.