The Airship (Das Luftschiff)

1983, color, 117 min., Feature
Director: Rainer Simon
Script: Fritz Rudolf Fries, Rainer Simon
Camera: Roland Dressel
Music: Friedrich Goldmann, Karl-Ernst Sasse
Cast: Jörg Gudzuhn, Elisa Montes, Victor Carvajal, Daniel Roth, Katrin Knappe, Gudrun Ritter
35mm, English subtitles: renting information
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VHS-PAL, no subtitles: renting information

Synopsis:

15 year-old Franz Xavier Stannebein wants to do nothing more than fly. Living at the turn of the Century, he carries this dream through his years at an orphanage and into adulthood as a merchant in Spain, eventually investing everything he has into building his own version of an airship. He later meets some industrialists in Germany who want to support his idea. They ask him to build an airfield in Spain. When he sees the Nazis use the field during the Spanish Civil War, however, he feels betrayed and goes to Germany to protest. There, he is thrown into an insane asylum. After the war, his grandson learns that his grandfather was a victim of the Nazi euthanasia program for the insane. Based on the novel by Fritz Rudolf Fries.