Aimée & Jaguar (1999)
Starring: Maria Schrader, Juliane Kohler, Johanna Wokalek, Heike Makatsch and Elisabeth Degen
Synopsis: In 1943, while the Allies are bombing Berlin and the Gestapo is purging the capital of Jews, a dangerous love affair blossoms between two women.
One of them, Lilly Wust (NOWHERE IN AFRICA's Juliane Köhler), married and the mother of four sons, enjoys the privileges of her stature as an exemplar of Nazi motherhood. For her, this affair will be the most decisive experience of her life. For the other woman, Felice Schragenheim (Maria Schrader), a Jewess and member of the underground, their love fuels her with the hope that she will survive.
"Aimee and Jaguar" was released in 1999, one decade after the destruction of the Berlin Wall, when the question of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the German national past of the Holocaust) had resurfaced with new intensity in a unified Germany in which Berlin again was the capital. Intense public debates about remembering and guilt over the past were made manifest in relationship to a range of cultural artifacts: for example, in disputes about the then almost completed Jewish Museum and the then planned national Holocaust memorial. These trends converge and are reconfigured in "Aimee and Jaguar".
