Plots to kill Hitler, whether based on true events or not, are familiar fodder for filmmakers, but Oliver Hirschbiegel’s forthcoming Georg Elser will focus more on the would-be assassin than the target. The film will tell the story of how the titular Elser rigged a bomb near a podium where the Führer was set to deliver a lengthy speech in the fall of 1939. The bomb detonated, but it went off 13 minutes after the speech had ended, killing eight non-Hitlers. Elser was subsequently arrested, interrogated, tortured, and sent to a concentration camp, where he was executed six years later.
According to Deadline, Georg Elser will “follow Elser’s path from the the Swabian Alps to the assassination attempt and his last days in the concentration camp.” The Nazi Germany setting is familiar to Hirschbiegel, whose 2004 film Downfall centered around the final days of the Third Reich and was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. Filming has already begun in southern Germany.