Rosenstraße

PG-13

Released Aug 10, 2003

2h 15m

Drama

War

List

56%

63 Reviews

Tomatometer

67%

1,000+ Ratings

Audience Score

After the death of her father, Hannah (Maria Schrader) observes her widowed mother, Ruth (Jutta Lampe), partaking in Orthodox Jewish mourning rituals. Ruth refuses to answer Hannah's questions about why she's doing this, so Hannah goes to Germany to learn about her parents' past during World War II. She meets the elderly Lena (Doris Schade), who tells Hannah about Ruth's role in the Rosenstrasse protest of 1943, which aimed to free Jewish husbands from jail and prevent their deportation.

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Critics Consensus

Thoughtful drama marred by structural problems.

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Frances H

A touching story of a group of women who chose to stand by their Jewish husbands, so that most were released. Maybe, in the face of the Holocaust, this seems like a drop in the proverbial bucket, but as the film says, maybe it was just a few lives, "a small ray of light in the darkness," but when you are in deepest night, that one ray is all you have, and you hold on to the memory of it with all your might.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

10/17/14

Full Review

Audience Member

Based on a true story which happens in second world war. The story is very touching. A german woman fights to get her jewish husband back. The man has been capture in the Rosenstrasse.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

02/21/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Margarethe von Trotta's cinematic account of the Rosenstrasse protests of 1943 perhaps has too many threads to be tied up simply, but history and recollection can be a bit complicated. Katya Riemann stars as Lena von Eschenbach, the daughter of an aristocratic German (Aryan) family, who falls in love with and marries a talented Jewish musician, Fabian Fischer (Martin Feifel), who because of his "mixed marriage" to an Aryan woman has not been rounded up for deportation with the other Jews of the city, and instead is given a job in a munitions factory. But in the winter of 1943, he was detained with a few hundred other men and women in a Jewish center on Rose Street (Rosenstrasse) in Berlin. His wife, Lena, finds out where he is being held, and there she joins an increasing number of other wives and relatives whose loved ones are being held. They form a vigil group and stand watch in the cold, hoping to put moral pressure on the authorities for the release of their loved ones. It is at the Rosenstrasse protests that Lena meets and adopts a little Jewish girl, Ruth, whose mother is also being held. She takes Ruth into her home, and treats her as her own daughter. The story is framed by a modern day story of Ruth, now living in New York City, mourning her recently deceased American husband, while her own daughter Hannah (Maria Schrader) goes to Berlin to find Lena Fischer, now nearly ninety, and to learn from her the story of her mother's tragic past. The film moves very slowly and has a few too many subplots to be entirely successful, but there are moments of well-earned emotion, and the film is always tasteful and thoughtful. This is not a Holocaust movie, and it's scope is too microscopic to be particularly weighty compared to films like "Schindler's List," but still history is actually the sum of millions of smaller stories like this, and one thing "Rosenstrasse" does well is to make us mindful of the moral complexities that faced the German population during the Third Reich, ordinary people who were caught up in the larger sweep of world events. Some acted nobly, some less so, and "Rosenstrasse" does the service of putting faces, and personal details, to a few of those stories.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

02/02/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Longish and rather intricate, It tried to be a serious Holocaust film but was in reality considerably lighter than other productions. That having been said, the cast did a fine job.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

02/13/23

Full Review

Audience Member

A great movie about the Holocaust. I was really impress with Maria Schraders and Katja Riemmans acting. The women asking for their husbands in Rosenstrasse is a reminder of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo. Great story.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

02/06/23

Full Review

Audience Member

Well produced, if a slightly contrived narrative. based on an event which has been interpreted in various ways - there seems to be no clear historic basis for claiming this as an example of successful nonviolent protest. See opposing tales on Wikipedia and the Facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=13032654881&topic=10884 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenstrasse_protest . Enjoyed the drama though - I was drawn in and upset in equal measure, as always with movies about the Holocaust.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

02/14/23

Full Review

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Margarethe von Trotta

Director

Katja Riemann

Lena Fischer (aged 33)

Maria Schrader

Hannah Weinstein

Martin Feifel

Fabian Fischer

Jürgen Vogel

Arthur von Eschenbach

Jutta Lampe

Ruth Weinstein

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Marjorie Baumgarten

Austin Chronicle

Not uninteresting, and it is very nicely performed, although you'll strain to learn from the movie the history on which it is based and struggle futilely to get inside the motivations of its characters.

Rated: 1.5/5

Dec 12, 2004

Full Review

Roger Moore

Orlando Sentinel

The trite framework, static staging and unemotional acting render this a most forgettable Holocaust tale.

Rated: 3/5

Dec 3, 2004

Full Review

Connie Ogle

Miami Herald

Succeeds as a testament to the power of love and, in particular, as a tribute to brave women.

Rated: 2.5/4

Oct 29, 2004

Full Review

David Walsh

World Socialist Web Site

Rosenstrasse delivers a blow to the arguments of those who claim that the crimes of the Nazis expressed the will of the German people.

Feb 15, 2021

Full Review

Agnieszka Tennant

Christianity Today

In spite of some manipulation and improbability, Rosenstrasse made me feel good for a good, historical reason, and it didn't minimize anyone's suffering in the process.

Rated: 3/4

Nov 1, 2006

Full Review

Jeremy C. Fox

Pajiba

Lena became a foster mother to Ruth for several years, but for all the interest von Trotta puts into that story, Lena might as well have been asked to catsit.

Sep 16, 2005

Full Review

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Synopsis

After the death of her father, Hannah (Maria Schrader) observes her widowed mother, Ruth (Jutta Lampe), partaking in Orthodox Jewish mourning rituals. Ruth refuses to answer Hannah's questions about why she's doing this, so Hannah goes to Germany to learn about her parents' past during World War II. She meets the elderly Lena (Doris Schade), who tells Hannah about Ruth's role in the Rosenstrasse protest of 1943, which aimed to free Jewish husbands from jail and prevent their deportation.

Director: Margarethe von Trotta
Screenwriter: Margarethe von Trotta, Pamela Katz
Distributor: IDP Distribution
Production Co: Get Reel Productions
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama, War
Original Language: German
Release Date (Theaters): Aug 10, 2003, Original
Release Date (Streaming): May 4, 2017
Box Office (Gross USA): $732.0K
Runtime: 2h 15m
Sound Mix: Surround

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