• Film running length: 95 min
• UK release date: 8/11/2008
• Language: English
• Distributor: Uk Jewish Film Festival

Who´s in it?

What´s the plot? Summoned to perform for Hitler’s birthday, legendary Spanish clown Charlie Rivel and sidekick Witzi must rehearse an act with Gestapo agent Krauss in a Berlin theatre. It is April 1944. To Rivel’s discomfort Witzi sees art as a way of taking a moral stand against the Nazis, yet Krauss could consign them both to Auschwitz at the merest slight to his ego, despite his dream of emulating Rivel’s talent for comedy.

As this uneasy trio prepare for the show, a gripping test of loyalties ensues, and a chance to change the course of history presents itself.
The fact that The Clown and the Führer was filmed in Barcelona, entirely in Catalan, may come as rather a surprise. Eduard Cortès’ adaptation of a play by Gerard Vazquez – itself based on a true story – is superbly played, the claustrophobia of the theatre broken only by jarring bursts of archive footage and concentration camp tableaux which contrast the clowns’ predicament with the chaos on the streets of Berlin, and the
terrible fate of millions of Jews.