ANASTASIA: THE CZAR`S LAST DAUGHTER

Brauner liked to think in terms of parallel productions, thus often shooting films in direct competition with works whose development was known to him, or perhaps at times the ideas and subjects were just in the air. ANASTASIA: THE CZAR`S LAST DAUGHTER for instance was created in the same year as Anatole Litvak’s ANASTASIA was in Hollywood – the mystery of the lost Romanov, if she really had survived, could be depended on to sell a lot of glossy magazines at the time. Nevertheless Falk Harnack’s wonderfully dark melodrama proves on closer inspection to be so much more than a mere bit of pulp: the film is a fascinating experiment on historical projections and phantoms, the search for identity and attribution attempts, on curses and exile and home.