Julia Jentsch

A busboy with an inferiority complex and a driving ambition to become a millionaire quickly rises to become a head waiter, but the respect he craves continues to allude him. When he marries a Nazi gym teacher, the Czechs despise him even more, while the Germans barely tolerate him. Rare stamps taken from wealthy Jews make his dream come true after the war, but his first-class hotel is soon nationalized by the Communists and he ends his life in poverty and isolation.

During the year 1961, the influential German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt reported for the New Yorker magazine on the war crimes trial of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann. Her articles introducing her now-famous concept of the "Banality of Evil" triggered off an unprecedented controversy. Using footage from the actual Eichmann trial and weaving a narrative that spans three countries, Margarethe von Trotta turns the often invisible passion for thought into immersive dramatic cinema.