The name Anne Frank stands for courage and confidence in hopeless times. But also for the bold and unsparing view of an adolescent on her family and her environment. Millions of people worldwide know her diary, which she wrote while hiding from the Nazis. Now, with this docu-drama, the first major German film adaptation of the Frankfurt girl's life story is available. The film follows Anne's fate from her happy childhood to her hiding in a backhouse in Amsterdam to her death in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It focuses on the relationship between father and daughter. Otto Frank was the only one to survive the betrayal of the backhouse inhabitants. Returning home from the Auschwitz death camp, he holds his dead daughter's diary in his hand. He gets to know the most secret thoughts and longings of his youngest, her dreams of love, freedom and sexuality. Her texts plunge him into deep sorrow. But they also unfold an unusual power and unexpectedly give him courage to live again. In Otto Frank's memory, with Anne's help, the lives of the two hidden families in the back house are resurrected. The accuracy and sharp wit with which Anne describes her housemates and their relationships is translated into impressive play scenes. They always keep closely to the template of the diary. Otto Frank learns of his daughter's first great love but also of her despair at not being able to love her mother as much as her father. He gets an idea of how agonizing it must have been for her to have to share her room with an aging dentist. And that she secretly exchanged more than kisses with the boy Peter van Pels in the attic.
Interviews with the last surviving people who knew Anne, went to school with her or met her in the death camp, bring the story back to reality again and again.
For the docu-drama "My Daughter Anne Frank," the director conducted interviews with the last surviving contemporary witnesses around the world, including in Basel, Jerusalem, New York and Sao Paulo. School friends and relatives tell in the film what they remember of Anne. The sister of the alleged traitor has her say, as does Otto Frank's stepdaughter from his second marriage.
