In ’13 Minutes’, Oliver Hirschbiegel tells the story of Georg Elser, a German carpenter who planned and carried out an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking Nazis at a party meeting in 1939.
Elser missed his target by 13 minutes, when Hitler left the building earlier than planned.
The German film director, who earned critical acclaim for his 2004 award-winning movie ‘Downfall’ about Adolf Hitler’s final days, compares Elser to whistleblower Edward Snowden: “That’s the beautiful thing about Georg Elser. He’s like (Edward) Snowden basically, Snowden today. He has no selfish interests, he just has this belief inside him, this need that comes from deep inside him that that has to be stopped. It’s all about freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of movement, individuality, all that that Elser sees going down the drain.”
The film pays homage to a largely unsung hero, who spent every night in the building where the meeting was to be held over the course of a month
