The Stranger

Description

The tale of a young man who decides to save Jewish prisoners from certain death in a Nazi concentration camp, run by his older brother, and to lead them to a ship that will take them to England. In 1921 a Jewish baby boy is found by the river Elbe in Hamburg and is adopted by a wealthy German family and given the name, Edmund. In 1941 he leaves university to live in his brother, Dietrich’s villa, who is commandant of a small concentration camp close to the Dutch border with Germany. ‘The Stranger’ is a story of a passionate young man’s rise to fight against oppression. It is a story about his struggle against seemingly impossible odds in order to save a suffering people from slavery and death. As we follow Edmund he transforms from a weak university student, who worships his adopted older brother, to a warrior in his own right, devoted to the single goal of saving the lives of those he feels are unjustly persecuted. How an unlikely young man is forced to become immovable in order to stand against the unstoppable.

Biblical Connection

15 God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ ~ Exodus 3 ‘The Stranger’ is inspired by the story of Moses, from adopted member of the Egyptian royal family to saviour of the Pharaoh’s slaves. The character of Moses has always been interesting because he has been viewed as both kind and harsh in equal measure, and described as a man of wisdom, nevertheless susceptible to sin. Moses’ world and story are exemplary of how willpower, hope and faith in righteousness can oppose even the seemingly insurmountable. His story takes the premise that one man can make a difference. ‘The Stranger’ is envisioned in the world of World War II Europe. It would be interesting to unfold a passionate character like Edmund, whose story and environmental conditions share many plot points and themes with that of his Biblical counterpart. The vision for this short film is to take a Biblical figure of immense importance and to see how that figure would evolve in a not too distant but very dark period of human history.