Saturday 28 November 20:20 and Monday 30 November 15:50 

Hilde                                                   
 hilde  

Broadway star, songstress, screen diva, international icon and bestselling author – Hildegard Knef was many things. But above all, she was a fighter who often fell, but never stayed down.

Berlin, 1943. The collapse of Nazi Germany looms, but young Hilde marches through the rubble of Berlin with only one thought on her mind: she wants to become a star. With luck, looks, the right men and overwhelming self-confidence, she makes her way in the film world, both during and after the war, swapping her Nazi lover for a young Jewish husband. Hollywood beckons, but Hilde (played by Heike Makatsch) is no Marlene. Underemployed and frustrated, she longs for Germany. The divided country welcomes her back, but a short nude scene in The Sinner (1950) provokes a national scandal, making her an outcast in her own country. Internationally, she becomes what she always wanted to be: a star, on the big screen, on Broadway, in America and Europe. The years go by in a whirl of successes and failures, and ups and downs. Yet even as her film career wanes and the swinging Sixties dawn, she picks herself up and embarks on a new journey...

Kai Wessel made his breakthrough with Martha Jellneck, which was nominated for the German Film Award in 1988. Among his most noted television productions are the filming of the diaries of Jewish literature professor Victor Klemperer, Klemperer – Ein Leben in Deutschland (1999), as well as Hat er Arbeit? (2000), Goebbels und Geduldig (2001) and Leben waere schoen (2003), which won the Adolf Grimme Award in 2004. His epic miniseries Die Flucht (2007) was one of the top-rated fiction productions of 2007.