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Registration: 2508252893930
Genre: Fiction
Alternative title: In Fesseln
Year: 2025
Duration: 1h 30m
Director: Werner Daehn, Daniel Khafif
Cast: Werner Daehn, Monika Gossmann, Pierre Kiwitt, Vinzenz Wagner
Country: Germany
Producer: Matthias Drescher,
Screenwriter: Daniel Khafif, Werner Daehn
Synopsis:
Safe Creative – Synopsis Title (Working): Moabit. The Sonnets of the Last Day “A historical drama inspired by Albrecht Haushofer’s Moabiter Sonette: Logline: Synopsis: In the prison yard he meets Herbert Kosney, a young communist inmate. A fragile trust forms. On the night of April 23, 1945, the prisoners are driven into the yard and executed by the SS. Haushofer, anticipating his fate, entrusts his manuscript to Kosney—who, miraculously surviving his wounds, later delivers the sonnets to Haushofer’s lifelong companion, Anna. The narrative alternates between this frame story in Moabit and flashbacks revealing Haushofer’s life: his intellectual upbringing in Bavaria, youthful love for Anna, a farmer’s daughter, his career as a professor and political advisor, his ties to resistance circles around Hess and the July 20 plot, and his doomed attempt to find refuge in the mountains before his final arrest. Through these memories, the film portrays a man torn between intellectual brilliance, personal longing, and historical responsibility. His relationship with Anna—deep, moral, but never fully realized—becomes a symbol of steadfastness and unfulfilled hope. Thematically, the film explores: Resistance and betrayal within Nazi Germany, Authorship and legacy through poetry written at the brink of death, Memory and survival, embodied in Kosney, the witness who carries the sonnets forward. The visual structure alternates between the claustrophobic interrogations of Moabit, the Alpine landscapes of Haushofer’s youth, and the ruins of Berlin in April 1945. Comparables: The Lives of Others (2006), 12 Angry Men (1957), Unforgiven (1992), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), Citizen Kane (1941). Ending:
A poetic legacy of resistance, survival, and memory in the final days of WWII.”
Berlin-Moabit, April 1945: Facing imminent execution, political prisoner Albrecht Haushofer writes his final sonnets in a Gestapo prison. His poems become accusation, legacy, and silent rebellion. A young fellow inmate survives—and rescues the manuscript that will outlive its author.
The story unfolds in Berlin, April 1945, within the walls of Moabit Prison. As the Red Army encircles the city, Albrecht Haushofer—writer, scholar, and son of Bavarian-Jewish intellectuals—is held as a political prisoner. Interrogated daily by Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller, he secretly composes his Moabiter Sonette, knowing that each day could be his last.
Kosney, recovering after the war, travels to Anna’s farm in Upper Bavaria. In a final, silent gesture, he places the bloodstained manuscript into her hands. The film closes on the first line of Haushofer’s sonnets—poetry that outlives violence and tyranny.
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Color: Yes
Sound: Yes
This work cannot be made available to AI systems.
No AI has been used in the creative process of this work
This work may be perceived as informative or factual, but it is fiction.
