Volker Schlöndorff’s DIPLOMACY, starring “two of France’s greatest actors,” Niels Arestrup and André Dussollier, will open at the Film Forum in New York on Wednesday, October 15, and at the Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles on November 7. A national release will follow.  

As the Allies march toward Paris in the summer of 1944, Hitler gives orders that the French capital should not fall into enemy hands, or if it does, then ‘only as a field of rubble’. The person assigned to carry out this barbaric act is Wehrmacht commander of Greater Paris, General Dietrich von Choltitz, who already has mines planted on the Eiffel Tower, in the Louvre and Notre Dame and on the bridges over the Seine. Nothing should be left as a reminder of the city’s former glory. However, at dawn on 25 August, Swedish Consul General Raoul Nordling steals into German headquarters through a secret underground tunnel and there starts a tension-filled game of cat and mouse as Nordling tries to persuade Choltitz to abandon his plan .

In this riveting adaptation of the stage success by Cyril Gély, the great Volker Schlöndorff (Academy Award winner THE TIN DRUM) has created a psychologically elaborate game of political manners between two highly contrasting characters. While Choltitz entrenches himself behind his duty to obey unquestioningly all military orders, Nordling tries everything he can to appeal to reason and humanity and prevent the senseless destruction of the beloved ‘City of Light.’

Photo credits: Niels Arestrup as General Dietrich von Choltitz and André Dussollier as Consul Raoul Nordling in DIPLOMACY. A film by Volker Schlöndorff. A Zeitgeist Films release.
Photo: Jérôme Prébois