Rosa Luxemburg (film)

Rosa Luxemburg is a 1986 West German drama film directed by Margarethe von Trotta. The film received the 1986 German Film Award for Best Feature Film (Bester Spielfilm), and Barbara Sukowa won the Cannes Film Festival's Best Actress Award and the German Film Award for Best Actress for her performance as Rosa Luxemburg.^[2][3]

Rosa Luxemburg
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Margarethe von Trotta
Written by	Margarethe von Trotta
Produced by	Eberhard Junkersdorf Regina Ziegler
Starring	Barbara Sukowa
Cinematography	Franz Rath
Edited by	Dagmar Hirtz
Distributed by	Concorde
Release date	10 April 1986 (1986-04-10)
Running time	123 minutes
Country	West Germany
Language	German
Box office	508,284 admissions (Germany)[1]

Plot

Polish socialist and Marxist Rosa Luxemburg dreams about revolution during the era of German Wilhelminism. While Luxemburg campaigns relentlessly for her beliefs, getting repeatedly imprisoned in Germany as well as in Poland, she spars with lovers and comrades until Luxemburg is assassinated by Freikorps for her leadership in the Spartacist uprising after World War I in 1919.

Cast

• Barbara Sukowa as Rosa Luxemburg
• Daniel Olbrychski as Leo Jogiches
• Otto Sander as Karl Liebknecht
• Adelheid Arndt as Luise Kautsky
• Jürgen Holtz as Karl Kautsky
• Doris Schade as Clara Zetkin
• Hannes Jaenicke as Kostja Zetkin
• Jan Biczycki as August Bebel
• Karin Baal as Mathilde Jacob
• Winfried Glatzeder as Paul Levi
• Regina Lemnitz as Gertrud
• Barbara Lass as Rosa's mother
• Dayna Drozdek as Rosa, 6 years old
• Henryk Baranowski as Josef, Rosa's brother
• Patrizia Lazreg as Josef's daughter
• Charles Régnier as Jean Jaurès

Reception

Miss von Trotta's film, with a fine, soberly intelligent performance by Barbara Sukowa (the seductive star of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Lola), is a first-rate introduction to an extremely complicated personality. It's necessarily simplified, as well as biased on behalf of those aspects of Luxemburg that will speak most clearly to today's audiences.

— Vincent Canby – The New York Times^[4]