By Dan Dunn
Special to the Daily Press

The movie: Sophie Scholl — The Final Days
The director: Marc Rothemund
The stars: Julia Jentsch, Fabian Hinrichs, Alexander Held

A most deserving Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, “Sophie Scholl — The Final Days” is an impressive feat of filmmaking highlighted by Julia Jentsch’s powerhouse portrayal of the intrepid title character, a 21-year-old university student who helped organize an underground resistance in Munich called the White Rose. To relate the true story of Germany’s famed anti-Nazi heroine, director Marc Rothemund judiciously narrowed his focus to the frenzied six-day period in 1943 during which Sophie and her older brother Hans (Fabian Hinrichs) were arrested for distributing anti-Nazi propaganda, interrogated, tried and convicted of high treason.

Rothemund and screenwriter Fred Breinersdorfer used the original minutes of Sophie’s interrogations by Gestapo official Robert Mohr (Alexander Held) to craft many of the film’s most compelling scenes pitting the unflappable young insurgent against the hard-line Third Reich heavy. Jentsch, who won Best Actress for the role at the 2005 European Film Awards, renders Sophie as a simmering cauldron of righteous idealism whose unwavering conviction to humanist principles ultimately has an unexpected effect on her interrogator. The Scholl’s sham of a trial is dispensed with quickly, the brutal efficiency with which their fate decided by one of Hitler’s minions chilling. But in the end, this heart-stopping drama is an uplifting portrait of courage and a testament to the efficacy of non-violent resistance. (In German with English subtitles).

(Not rated. Running time: 117 minutes)