The Shadow Hour

In 1942, Christian writer, journalist and poet Jochen Klepper lived with his Jewish wife Johanna and his Jewish stepdaughter Renate in Berlin, Germany. On December 10th SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann rejected their applications to emigrate and gave Jochen Klepper the so called Goebbels’ Ultimatum: his job or his marriage. The same night the Kleppers made an inconceivable decision; a decision that thousands of Germans in mixed marriages made within the dark years of the Second World War. Their choices were the last and sad defense of the Jewish Christian community.

Using Klepper’s extensive diary entries, filmmaker Benjamin Martins prepared a film that casts light on a dark chapter in German history. The family's last conversations are sensitively interwoven with Klepper's various diary entries, with much of the dialogue based on Jochen Klepper’s writings. 

The life of the Klepper family was increasingly restricted by the national socialists. In "The Shadow Hour" the sense of restriction and distress is mirrored in a confined 1:1 (square) film format.