Synopsis
Hannah Arendt is a portrait of the genius that shook the world with her discovery of “the banality of evil.” After she attends the Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, Arendt dares to write about the Holocaust in terms no one has ever heard before. Her work instantly provokes a furious scandal, and Arendt stands strong as she is attacked by friends and foes alike. But as the German-Jewish emigre also struggles to suppress her own painful associations with the past, the film exposes her beguiling blend of arrogance and vulnerability — revealing a soul defined and derailed by exile.

Program Note
Director Margarethe VON TROTTA, who illustrated stories of women fiercely leading their lives in their given time in films such as Rosa Luxemburg and Vision, once again returns with another strong female figure. Her film paints a picture of Hannah ARENDT, a German Jewish philosopher and political thinker, but the director is not interested at all in unraveling the story of ARENDT’s life through a narrative. Instead, the director focuses only on the moment ARENDT conceptualized the nature of the Nazis\' racist massacres as the “Banality of Evil” during the trials of the Nazi war criminals, omitting all other parts of her life from the film. The camera persistently follows ARENDT even when she is completely absorbed in thought, catches even the slightest changes, and accomplishes the “visualization of speculation” by capturing ARENDT’s long silences as she quietly struggles between the events and incidents.
The director daringly chose to illustrate only the most important moment in ARENDT’s ideological trajectory, and the brilliance of her decision shines through in the long-take shot in the final lecture scene, which illustrates the keen insight and strength of a philosopher who holds fast to her belief. Following her roles as Rosa LUXEMBRUG and Hildegard VON BINGEN, Barbara SUKOWA once again takes on the character of Hannah ARENDT and accomplishes an outstanding feminist performance in the film. [HONG So-in]