29/07/2025 - The German director returns two decades after her last feature, The Hitler Cantate

l-r: Producer Christine Kiauk, actress Carla Juri, director Jutta Brückner, actress Corina Harfouch, DoP Daniela Knapp and producer Herbert Schwering on the set of The Assistance (© Silviu Guiman)

Shooting has concluded on Jutta Brückner's The Assistance (German title: Die Assistentin, lit. “the female assistant”), starring Corinna Harfouch (best known for her turns in Treffen in Travers, nominated for a European Film Award, Downfall [+see also:
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Harfouch plays Ursula, an archaeologist whose mother mysteriously dies after she uncovers a perfectly preserved bog body. Circumstances become more complex when Ursula hires an assistant named Mel to help her, the reference of the German title, but this mysterious young woman seems to know much more about the researcher’s past than she should. Daniela Knapp (winner of the German Film Award for The Poll Diaries [+see also:
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Brückner returns to create feature films 20 years after her last effort, the 2005 film The Hitler Cantate, in total having made nine feature films between 1975 and 2005. She is a Düsseldorf-born director for film, theatre and radio who began creating films in the 1970s; her work includes both fiction and documentary. Her autobiographical 1980 film The Hunger Years (Hungerjahre) won the FIPRESCI prize at Berlinale, and she served as the head of the Berlinale jury in 1981. Brückner has also won the German Film Critics Award three times for her work.

The film is produced by Christine Kiauk and Herbert Schwering for Coin Film. Additional funding was provided by Hessen Film, Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, the German Federal Film Board (FFA)/German Federal Film Fund (DFFF) and Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (MBB) and. X Verleih will distribute the film in cooperation with Warner Bros. in Germany in 2026.