GIRL WITH THE RED HAIR, THE

More than three years in the making, THE GIRL WITH THE RED HAIR's true story inspired Ben Verbong to make his first feature length film. Previously the director was noted for his screenplays, short films and direction for the Royal Flemish Theater. This Dutch New Wave film concerns the transformation of a shy middle-class law student into a resistance fighter in charge of executing fascist collaborators in occupied Holland near the end of World War II. Renee Soutendijk (1980's “Spetters”) plays Hanni Schaft, who joins a small resistance group and meets Ann (Loes Luca), whose role as liquidator seems too violent for Hanni to emulate. But when she meets Hugo (Peter Tuinman), who doubts the ability of women in the resistance, Hanni becomes so aggressive that she and Hugo, now her lover, break away from their group and perform executions on their own. The German S.S. hunt for Hanni on a massive scale after identifying a photo of THE GIRL WITH THE RED HAIR. An extremely muted color process was developed to create the war atmosphere, using Hanni's red hair as a symbolic accent. Verbong emphasizes the reaction to war on an individual level, stating, “It was more interesting to me to portray the power and inevitability of fascism through what happened to one person, than by cliched images of horror.”