A Hidden Life

A Hidden Life is a 2019 epic historical drama film written and directed by Terrence Malick. It stars August Diehl, Valerie Pachner, and Matthias Schoenaerts, with Michael Nyqvist and Bruno Ganz in their final performances. The film depicts the life of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer and devout Catholic who refused to fight for the Nazis in World War II. The title is taken from George Eliot's Middlemarch:...for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.Eliot in turn derived it from a phrase in the New Testament, the Epistle to the Colossians 3:3: "For you died, and [now] your life is hidden with Christ in God." The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2019 and was theatrically released in the United States on December 13, 2019. It received critical acclaim upon release and was the final feature film to be released under the Fox Searchlight Pictures name before Walt Disney Studios changed the company's name to Searchlight Pictures on January 17, 2020. Plot Austrian peasant farmer Franz Jägerstätter, born and brought up in the small village of St. Radegund, is working his land when war breaks out. Married to Franziska, colloquially Fani, the couple are important members of the tight-knit rural community. They live a simple life with the passing years marked by the arrival of the couple's three girls. Franz is called up for basic training in the German army and is away from his beloved wife and children for months. Eventually, when France surrenders and it seems the war might end soon, he is sent back from training. With his mother and sister-in-law Resie, he and his wife farm the land and raise their children amid the mountains and valleys of upper Austria, cutting hay and gathering. As the war goes on, Jägerstätter and the other able-bodied men in the village are called up to fight. Their first requirement is to swear an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Despite pressure from the mayor and his neighbors, who increasingly ostracize him and his family, and from the Bishop of Linz, Jägerstätter refuses. Wrestling with the knowledge that his decision will mean arrest and even death, he finds strength in his faith in God, his prayers, and Fani's love and support.