Walt Disney Makes Anne Frank Film

by Erica Morris - Thursday 20th August 2009


Anne Frank's stepsister Eva Schloss this week joined Holocaust educators in welcoming the announcement of a new Walt Disney Company film based on the life of the diarist.

The latest cinematic interpretation of Anne's diary will be written, directed and produced by American writer David Mamet, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for Glengary Glen Ross.

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It will be based on a 1950s stage version of the publication, The Diary of Anne Frank, and will also include Mamet's own take on the 25 months which the young authoress, her family and four others spent in the small annexe in Amsterdam. The group were betrayed and turned in to Nazi officers in 1944, and Anne died of typhus aged 15 just a year later at Bergen-Belsen.

Saying she hopes the production, which is predicted to be released in 2011, does "its duty to spread Anne's message", Schloss, Anne's posthumous stepsister, welcomed the continued sharing of the story of the teenager's life with new generations and spoke of the film's potential to educate.

She told TJ: "I hope this will be a very good film which will tell Anne's story honestly, and accurately show the types of horrors and conditions she and the others she was in hiding with had to endure. If it's well done, it could be a wonderful educational film too."

Austrian-born Schloss, who herself spent time in hiding during World War II and knew Anne from when the two were neighbours prior to the war, was liberated from Auschwitz with her mother in 1945 and the pair repatriated to Amsterdam.

It was there that Schloss' mother married Anne's father Otto Frank - the only survivor of the eight from Anne's annexe - in 1953. Schloss said her stepfather told her he hoped Anne's diary would promote "tolerance in every respect, with religion and with race, and would educate generations to come on what can happen when intolerance is ignored".

She added: "I think it is a good thing when Anne's work is able to live on, but there is a responsibility to ensure it is done respectfully and with honesty. That is what my stepfather would have wanted."

Gillian Walnes, the co-founder and executive director of the Anne Frank Trust UK, said: "We are always keen to see Anne's story kept in the public consciousness. We know what a positive effect learning Anne's story and reading her words can have on young people and how this can shape their attitudes towards difference.

"We are pleased to see that this new production will be created by a writer and director of David Mamet's standing, as we would only wish to see production values of the highest integrity. The worst scenario would be a surfeit of mediocre Anne Frank dramatisations. Learning Anne's story and what happened in the Holocaust must remain a seminal life experience in the process of growing up, and must never be sanitised, sentimentalised or sensationalised."

Karen Pollock, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, added: "The real stories of Holocaust survivors and victims are more compelling than fiction could ever be - especially that of Anne Frank, whose diary has touched the lives of millions of young people and helped them engage with realities of the Holocaust. Hopefully this film will further encourage future generations to consider the vital lessons of tolerance and opposition to prejudice that the Holocaust teaches us."

This will not be the first major film centring on Anne Frank. A 1959 film based on a stage version of the publication, The Diary of Anne Frank, won critical acclaim and a best supporting actress Oscar for co-star Shelley Winters.

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