General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Sophie Scholl – The Final Days

Sophie Scholl – The Final Days (German: Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage) is a 2005 German historical drama directed by Marc Rothemund and written by Fred Breinersdorfer, depicting the last six days of the life of the anti-Nazi resistance fighter Sophie Scholl, from her arrest in Munich on 18 February 1943 to her execution four days later¹^•². Julia Jentsch stars as Sophie Scholl, with Fabian Hinrichs as her brother Hans, Alexander Held as the Gestapo interrogator Robert Mohr, and André Hennicke as the Nazi judge Roland Freisler³. The film won the Silver Bear for Best Director and the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 2005 Berlin International Film Festival and was Germany's official entry for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film⁴^•⁵.

Key fact	Detail
Original title	Sophie Scholl – Die letzten Tage³
Director / screenwriter	Marc Rothemund / Fred Breinersdorfer¹
Release	Premiered in competition at the Berlin Film Festival on 13 February 2005; German theatrical release 24 February 2005⁶^•⁷
Runtime / language	117 minutes, German with English subtitles¹
Principal cast	Julia Jentsch (Sophie Scholl), Fabian Hinrichs (Hans Scholl), Alexander Held (Robert Mohr), Johanna Gastdorf (Else Gebel), André Hennicke (Roland Freisler), Florian Stetter (Christoph Probst)³
Major awards	Silver Bears for Best Director and Best Actress (Berlin 2005); three Lolas including Audience Award and Best Actress; Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film⁴^•¹^•⁵
Historical basis	Gestapo interrogation transcripts, trial records, and interviews with survivors and relatives⁸

Spoilers

Story and historical setting

The film covers the period from 17 to 22 February 1943, told from Sophie Scholl's own perspective². Sophie and her brother Hans are members of the White Rose, an underground student resistance group at the University of Munich that wrote, printed, and distributed leaflets denouncing the Nazi regime and the war⁹. On 18 February 1943 the siblings carry leaflets into the university's atrium and lay them out before the lecture halls; Sophie drops a thick stack from an upper floor just as the hall begins to fill after lectures, and the two are seen and arrested¹⁰.

Most of the film consists of Sophie's interrogation by the Gestapo officer Robert Mohr, which develops into a psychological duel. She initially denies involvement and fights for her freedom and her brother's; when incriminating evidence is found, Hans cracks under pressure and Sophie confesses, placing herself protectively in front of the other members of the White Rose¹¹^•¹². Moved by her bravery, Mohr offers her a way out if she presents herself as a mere follower, but she refuses, and the film presents her refusal as the act that seals her fate³.

The final act is the show trial before the People's Court (Volksgerichtshof), presided over by Roland Freisler, who is sent from Berlin to Munich with the death sentence already decided¹². Sophie, Hans, and their fellow member Christoph Probst are condemned for high treason and executed by guillotine at Stadelheim prison on 22 February 1943, the same day⁹^•¹³. The historical Sophie Scholl was 21 years old at her death¹³.

Sources and production

Documentary basis. The screenplay by Fred Breinersdorfer draws on previously unavailable original minutes of the Gestapo interrogations, eyewitness accounts of the trial, and interviews with Robert Mohr's son, Sophie's younger sister, and the nephew of Else Gebel, Sophie's cellmate in her final days⁸. The interrogation transcript of Sophie Scholl had been held in East German archives until 1990 and became available only after the fall of the Berlin Wall; Rothemund's film was the first on the subject to use these recently discovered records¹⁴^•¹⁵. Much of the dialogue in the interrogation and trial scenes follows the actual records¹⁶.

The film was produced by Goldkind Film and Broth Film in co-production with Bayerischer Rundfunk, Südwestrundfunk, and Arte, with Christoph Müller, Sven Burgemeister, Fred Breinersdorfer, and Marc Rothemund as producers⁶. Martin Langer was director of photography, Hans Funck the editor, and Johnny Klimek and Reinhold Heil composed the score³. In 2005 Breinersdorfer's screenplay was published as a paperback by Fischer together with documents including the interrogation transcripts of Sophie and Hans Scholl, Christoph Probst, and Alexander Schmorell¹⁰.

Reception and awards

The film premiered in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival on 13 February 2005, where the international jury awarded it the Silver Bear for Best Director (Marc Rothemund) and the Silver Bear for Best Actress (Julia Jentsch), and the Ecumenical Jury gave it its main prize⁴^•¹⁷. At the German Film Awards (Lolas) it received three honors, including the Audience Award and the Best Actress award for Jentsch¹. Jentsch also won the European Film Award for Best Actress in 2005¹⁸. The film was selected as Germany's official entry for the 78th Academy Awards and nominated for Best Foreign Language Film⁵^•¹⁷.

Critics praised Jentsch's performance and the film's restraint. Roger Ebert described it as a police procedural in which the audience knows from the outset that Sophie is guilty, with the drama carried by the interrogation across a desk in police headquarters¹⁹. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an 87% critics' score from 94 reviews¹⁶. In Germany it sold 1,159,056 cinema tickets (figure as of 2016, per the Filmförderungsanstalt)²⁰, and its United States gross was $676.2K¹⁶.

Place in cultural memory

The film is the third recent German feature centered on the 21-year-old student, after Michael Verhoeven's The White Rose and Percy Adlon's Fünf letzte Tage, both from 1982¹⁰. Adlon's film covered essentially the same period from the point of view of Sophie's prison cellmate, based on the cellmate's memoirs rather than the then-undiscovered interrogation records²¹. Scholars of German cultural memory have read Rothemund's film as a "post-memory film" that normalizes its heroine, moving beyond the earlier generation's glorification so that modern audiences can experience the history viscerally; the screenwriter Breinersdorfer said he had initially been reluctant to write the script because he saw Scholl only as a distant figure "who is always on a plinth and whom schools are named after"²².

The film fits within a broader wave of German cinema, alongside Downfall and The Ninth Day, that dwells on the moral choices of individuals to collaborate with or resist the Nazi regime rather than on the regime's machinery itself²¹. A newly restored 4K version has been made available for theatrical and festival engagements⁵.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026