Charlotte Salomon: Life and the Maiden

Q&As with Vicky Krieps and co-directors Delphine Coulin and Muriel Coulin

The extraordinary life of artist Charlotte Salomon has inspired novels, plays, operas, ballets, and even an animated film. This new documentary by Delphine Coulin and Muriel Coulin offers an intimate and expansive new look at the young woman who, though she was murdered in Auschwitz at age 26, completed an astounding amount of art, including some 1,300 paintings, before her deportation. Narrated as though from her own voice and featuring a cascade of her images, the film delves into her youth in Berlin, her escape to the south of France after the rise of the Nazis, her love affair with a music teacher, and the creative explosion that resulted in her brilliant body of multimedia work—ahead-of-their-time creations mixing gouache, text, and music. The film features the voices of Vicky Krieps, Mathieu Amalric, and Hanna Schygulla.