Angry Harvest

Angry Harvest
Directed by	Agnieszka Holland
Written by	Paul Hengge Agnieszka Holland
Starring	Armin Mueller-Stahl Elisabeth Trissenaar
Music by	Jörg Straßburger
Cinematography	Jozef Ort-Snep
Edited by	Barbara Kunze
Release dates	1985 (1985)
Running time	105 minutes
Country	West Germany
Language	German

Angry Harvest (German: Bittere Ernte) is a 1985 West German film directed by Agnieszka Holland. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It is based on a novel written by Hermann Field and Stanislaw Mierzenski while they were imprisoned by the Polish government in the early 1950s. (The circumstances under which the novel were written are documented in Field's autobiographical story, "Trapped in the Cold War: The Ordeal of an American Family".)

Plot

In the winter of 1942-43, a Jewish family leaps from a train going through Silesia. They are separated in the woods, and Leon, a local peasant who's now a farmer of some wealth, discovers the woman, Rosa, and hides her in his cellar. Leon's a middle-aged Catholic bachelor, tormented by his sexual drive. He doesn't tell Rosa he's seen signs her husband is alive, and he begs her to love him. Rosa offers herself to Leon if he'll help a local Jew in hiding who needs money. Leon pays, and love between Rosa and him does develop, but then Leon's peasant subservience and his limited empathy lead to tragedy.

Cast

• Armin Mueller-Stahl: Leon Wolny
• Elisabeth Trissenaar: Rosa Eckart
• Wojciech Pszoniak: Cybulowski
• Gerd Baltus: Geistlicher
• Anita Höfer: Pauline
• Hans Beerhenke: Kaspar
• Käte Jaenicke: Anna
• Isa Haller: Magda
• Margit Carstensen: Eugenia
• Kurt Raab: Maslanko
• Gunter Berger: Walden
• Wolf Donner: Dan

See also

• List of submissions to the 58th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
• List of German submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

External links

• Angry Harvest at IMDb