The Nasty Girl

Michael Verhoeven's 1990 German film takes off from the true story of Anna Rosmus. A schoolgirl starts preparing a competition essay on her town's past under the Nazis; the archives close, witnesses fall silent and the town declares her an enemy. Verhoeven tells this not as drama but as deliberately stylised comedy: back projection, a narrator addressing the frame, theatrical sets. That choice underlines that memory is something staged. Lena Stolze's performance carries the stubbornness without making it endearing. It was nominated in the foreign film category at the Academy Awards. The formal play may feel detached from the subject to some viewers. Who it's for: viewers interested in Germany's reckoning with its past and in formal experiment. Who it's not for: anyone wanting realistic storytelling, or avoiding the subject of the Nazi period.