The Daily Signal - After 12 Years In the Making, ‘Bonhoeffer’ Hits Big Screen

Episode Date: November 23, 2024

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian, a pastor, an anti-Nazi dissident, and a spy who took part in an assassination plot against Adolf Hitler. Bonhoeffer, an author himself, has had many books written about his life and now, his story is being told on the big screen. This Thanksgiving, Angel Studios is bringing “Bonhoeffer” to theaters. “The beauty of Bonhoeffer's story is that it shows what a real Christian should be like, and it shows a failed church, so you see both,” Camille Kampouris, one of the film’s producers, told The Daily Signal Podcast. Because of this duality, Kampouris says the film should appeal “to everyone.” Kampouris and her husband, Emmanuel Kampouris, set out to make a film about Bonhoeffer's life a decade ago with the famous last words, “how hard could it be.” Camille and Emmanuel Kampouris join “The Daily Signal Podcast” to share about the long, and sometimes harrowing, journey of making the movie, and what they hope audiences take from it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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It's the Tony Kinnettcast. Join us live on the Daily Signals, YouTube and Extreme every weeknight at 7 p.m. Eastern or anywhere you get your podcasts. Well, it is my honor to be in studio now with producers, Emmanuel and Camille Kemporese. Thank you both so much for being with us today. Really appreciate it. It's our pleasure. Well, this is a powerful movie. The Life of Dietrich Bonhofer. What a Life to Portray on Film.

How did you all get involved with this project? Should I start? Please, Camille, jump in it. You might want to direct the question. No problem. The Mediterranean. We'll just talk over. So we read a book, a biography on Dietrich Bonhofer 12 years ago. No, even more, 14 years ago, 2010. It was the Eric Metaxis biography. Yes. A thick one on Bonhoffer, about 500 pages. And I had been a fan of just in college. I'd read Cost of Disciple. I'd come to become a Christian after college and I read Cost of Discipleship and I loved it. And so it wasn't as if I'd never heard of him and he had heard of him as well.

And then a couple years later, we were just wondering, well, why hasn't there been a movie about this? And we would see Eric in church and we'd ask him. And Holly would just coming and going, but no one was really doing anything about it. So I remember my husband and I, we talked about it and we thought, how hard could it be to do a movie? Like, how hard could it be to do a script? Well, we missed last word. So we decided to say, well, let's see if we could get a script going. So we said we fund the script and then let them pick it off from there as well.

And you all have a background, Emmanuel, in filmmaking? No, I've never been in filmmaking ever. I've been a businessman. I ran a Fortune 500 company, but never done a movie in my life. So that's where the how hard could it be came in? Yeah, and I had been in the show business, but always in front of the camera. I had been a Muppeteer for years and I was on Sesame Street. But, you know, Sesame Street, the writers just pop out these scripts like in a week.

So we actually discussed it and thought, you know, it might take a year. maybe a year and a half and then you shoot it it is so we were Yeah we thought it was pretty straightforward Get a script And then let them take it on from there So yeah

And in reality Emmanuel it was 12 years But it took seven to get a script Seven to get a script Three screenwriters, two script doctors Consultants, three directors You know everybody's like adding to the script Yeah And eventually we hired a list

you know, Hollywood screenwriter and we got the script. But it was a good seven years. So that in and of itself took a long time. So Camille, as you were working on that script and having read Eric Metaxus's book and knowing Bonhofer's story and it being personal in some ways to you and your own faith journey, what was really important for you that you wanted to make sure was relayed through the script, through the movie about who Bonhofer was in his life? Right. So I think the most important thing for us, because we're also involved in an online website that teaches theology, was to show sort of the beauty of Bonhofer's story is that it shows what a real Christian should be like,

and it shows a failed church. So you see both. And so it should appeal even to everyone, to a secular world, to people who are maybe a little cynical about the church or churchgoers that are avid churchgoers, lukewarm, because you really see a church that failed, you know, just had no moral courage and just failed. They were more interested in keeping their power and their influence. And then you see this man that was all in, you know.

He was just going to go the distance if it required his death. So that was very attractive to us. Very attractive. I think that Emmanuel is one of the really fascinating parts about who Bonhofer was, that he actually, you know, as Nazism was really rising and Hitler was rising, to power. Dutrike Bonhover, he came to the U.S., but then chose to return to Germany. Yeah, well, he came here, spent about a year just in the early 30s, right? And he went to a union theological college, and then, in fact, he found it very, very, very weak, the teaching there.

And then he joined a church, the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. And this is where he really, if you were he was converted to Christianity, this is where the gospel was preached. And he worked there for one year and then went back. And in fact, he said, well, the segregation was taking place here in the States. This could never happen in Germany. So it goes back to Germany and what does he see? Segregation, they're moving.

They're just, Jews are being expelled from society essentially. They couldn't work. They couldn't do this. So it was a shock to him because he didn't expect that. But then because he had the experience in, States, he immediately stood up for the Jews. And this is where the journey began. He started speaking out and he was on radio and they cut him off and then he started an underground assembly and they shut it down. So he kept on being persecuted because he had the courage to speak

out for the Jews. It's very impressive, this courage, this very courageous man. But, Virginia, you were probably talking about this. He did go to, he went to America twice. You're probably talking about the second time, right? Yeah. So in eight years or nine years later, he went back and he just felt I have to, I will have no, he felt he had missed God that he just had to go back. He stayed one month. This was 1939.

The first phrase was 1930. So, yeah, he went back knowing that he could easily die, either by being sent to the front or by just speaking out and being killed by the Nazis. Nazis were certainly imprisoning a lot of pastors and priests. We didn't agree with Hitler, essentially. Yeah. And of course he tried to help pastors see the light, if you will. And they started a new church, so separate the church from the Reichger, the German church, which Hitler took over and co-opted.

And they started the confessing church. So that was a split, and he was hoping to attract people. but even that eventually failed. Were there other pastors speaking out? Yeah, I mean, at the very beginning, there was a large number. But as Hitler became more aggressive and, you know, and the persecution became, then the crowd thinned, you know, and he became, he was increasingly alone. They couldn't organize very well, you know, once the war started,

and Hitler started sending them to the front, you know. Or they would have to take an oath to Hitler. And they'd have to adopt what's called the Aryan laws, which many couldn't do. So there was still a confessing church, but vastly diminished as the years went on. And as the, you know, as a persecution grew, not everyone had the courage to pay the ultimate sacrifice that might be required. He came from a very well-known family. His father was a leading psychiatrist in Berlin. His brother-in-law was in the intelligence.

It was a leading person in the intelligence, military intelligence. And his uncle was Governor General of Berlin. So he was in a pretty, I mean, his family was a great deal of influence. This is why he also survived that long because they didn't bother. Yeah. There's a really interesting kind of moral and theological. question that's often asked with Bonhofer's life, that he was this amazing pastor and man of faith and took part in planning an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler, which sort of raises

this question of, you know, was there, was there a moral question in his mind of planning to kill another human as a Christian? Is that something Camille that you all? He struggled with that a lot. Yeah. You addressed that in the film kind of that. Yes. I mean, he actually wasn't like planning an assassination in the sense that he was going to pick up a gun and kill Hitler. Sure. But he was part of the assassination plot, no question. And he was there almost to lend his support, his moral support. His blessing.

Because. To the team, to the group that were actually going to perform the act, carry out of the act. He was there as a moral, you know, moral support and support, essentially, yes. What he felt was, when asked, like, how could you do this, he gave a, his answer was, you know, if a man was driving down the street, killing women and children, and mowing them down with their car, would you just bandage up the victims, or would you actually try to take the wheel from the driver? And so he, that is how he felt God was calling him. He didn't think that everyone should take up arms and try to kill the head of state, but he really felt finding out God's will for your life is very personal. And in the end,

he said, you know, if I'm wrong, I will appeal to God's mercy. I thought that's what he wanted me to do. You know, it was a big struggle for him. In many ways, Bonhofer seemed to sort of recognize before so many others did the threat of who Hitler really was.

How do you think he knew? How do you think he understood that that was a real threat? Well, I think that when he came back to Germany saw what Hitler was doing slowly and try to, you know, as I said, remove the Jews from society if I think that was so he sensed that very quickly and I think the fact that he had the experience

in the states with the segregation were black people here in the states I think that's that was why he was one of the first ones to notice the difference I mean his family said oh you don't don't cause any trouble there's nothing no Hitler's fine is all that but he said no he saw that first hand so he recognized he recognized what's happening in Germany what already has happened in the States. So it was easy for him. And as we carved blacks out of society, he was seeing Jews carved out of society. So it, yeah, it was a similar kind of how could we, how could we have our neighbors be taken off to prison and not say anything? And, but the thing that really started is Hitler was still

trying to be very nice to churches. So he put a law in that if you were not Aryan, you couldn't work for the government, you couldn't be. And so many, Christians had even Jewish blood in them because they had been there for so long. So even if he had a drop of Jewish blood, you couldn't work for the government, you couldn't work for the church. And a lot of pastors just kind of saying, well, that sounds okay. You know, well, so he was hearing this. And plus, yeah, so I think he, you know, he was young and he was brilliant too. He was a brilliant man.

So he was putting it together quickly. And he had courage. You know, sometimes I think we hide behind, if you look at some of the history of the church, they've hid behind, well, it's maybe not the possible to speak out or maybe, you know, but underneath it's like a lack of courage, right? Maybe it's not for us to say. Maybe we should just be praying for this person. So. He really drew a line in the sand in so many ways. Well, not an easy role to cast for. I mean, this is a powerful individual who has had such a powerful effect on society and on faith and on politics in so many ways. What was that process of finding the right man to play

the role of Dean Dietrich Bonhover. That was one of our biggest struggles. Because if you don't have a great Bonhover, you don't have a movie. Yeah. He's in every scene except maybe two, you know. So we always felt, man and I felt, man and I felt that had to be like someone classically trained, theater trained, because they had to have gravitas to play this.

And he had to be able to play, you know, young and old. And so we were our casting directors, you know, we did the whole film in Europe. The casting directors were in England, and we were scouring, you know, theater in England. And we just couldn't, we couldn't find anyone that would have, like, the youth and the, you know, the ones we would find would be very serious. And, you know, they would kind of give you your pastor voice.

And we didn't know if that would be sustainable for two hours. So Todd, the director called a friend of his in Germany, a filmmaker in Germany. And she said, only one person, Jonas Dassler. Wow. So we called the German agent. and she said it's called not reading. Jonas is not reading now. So that means he's not accepting scripts.

And we were like, we can't just wait. And so our casting directors have been around for 40 years, and they said, well, would you read it? Because if the agent reads it and loves it, you know, you're sort of in. You have a big foot in the door. So she read it, loved it, called Jonas and said, you really have to read the script. And Jonas said, you know, I'm not reading.

He just was burned out. He was acting so much. He was young. He's 27. Oh, wow. And, but he had that gravitas, and he was raised very well. He was very well-mannered. He's very humble.

But anyway, so long story short, he was very close to his grandmother, and she passed away. And he knew she was going to pass away. So he went to the funeral. And she had kind of planned the funeral. She'd asked them to sing a song as a family. So he got up and he sang the song. And at the end of the song, he looks down and it says lyrics by Dietrich Bonhofer. Oh, wow.

So he went home and said, I think I need to call the pageant. I think I need to read the script. Wow. But there were a lot of things like that that happened that were miraculous, you know. Divine intervention. It was great. It was wonderful. It was such a journey for you all.

You said 12 years from the beginning of deciding we're going to make this movie to now hitting the big screens on November 22nd. What were some of the greatest challenges of bringing this movie to the big screen? Well, we had many. First of all, you know, we had to raise the money and we raised the money twice the first time and then a lot of people took their money out when COVID hit because

said you know, theaters are closed and then fortunately we're able to get the money back and then we had the war in Ukraine and there was a big deal because we were going to film in Czech Republic and

just before we were going over there going over to Czech they told us that they the incentives they give from movie making was withdrawn by Parliament because they were redirect the funds to Ukraine war. Possibly. Anyhow, so we had to scramble

and fortunately one of our top one of our producers was very influential. He started looking where we could do Italy was fully booked. France was booked. So finally we ended up in Belgium and Ireland two countries. So we had to do this in two countries. So we filmed two thirds

in Belgium and one third in Ireland. So that was quite a story because we had to find two film organizations, two crews, two everything. It was quite complicated, actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a big challenge, I can tell you. In more ways than one, because accounting had two separate accounts, currencies and all that, you know, it was something else. But anyhow, we struggled through and made it. We were not going to give up.

We had come too far. So the script took seven years, and then we were all ready to go and, COVID. I mean, a global pandemic that shut down every movie theater. Things you can never plan. Yeah, you just, we were just thinking, what is going to make this movie? Well, what for you always has been one of the greatest

rewards of making this film? Because you have dedicated so much of your lives to this. What did you say? I don't know. Whatever. I mean, for me, one of the greatest rewards was actually to get to the set. Because we really

we were kind of in America. We were doing this in a vacuum, and as soon as we reamed at the film, you know, the pre-production started right away, so they were, you know, getting costumes. To arrive on the set, we were there every day for shooting. To just see it come to life was just a joy. And we were just pinching ourselves every day.

I mean, there are many obstacles yet to be faced on the set, you know, like the bus would break down or would rain when it wasn't supposed to rain or snow and, oh, no, it's snowing, you know. But just to see the story come to life after 12 years, you know, and the actors were wonderful, wonderful act. All of them are just really... Yeah, we had about 800-plus people working on this movie. I mean, at one time, you sort of bit.

Crew and actors. So it was a big set, you know, a lot of people milling around, so you had a... But fortunately, we had good people who ran all the department heads, very good with some excellent department heads. One of the one who's directed of photography was John Matheson who did Gladiator. He's a legend. He's a legend.

And he was available. And he was available. And he found his buddy. He was John Beard, who was the set designer. So we're very fortunate. We had some very good leading filmmakers there. The department heads helping us up. Hollywood's very relational.

You know, so Todd being inside and our other producer, Todd Kermanicki, the screenwriter. and the director and our other producer Ralph Winter, they were just, they loved the script, and they were just calling around and seeing who's available, and we got great talent and great actors. He was really fortunate, doesn't it? I don't know if you know the actor August Deal. I mean, he's really a great German actor.

He's very well-known. He was in Gloria Spastards Here. He was in a lot of movies, very well-known in Germany, and he came on board to play Niemuller, who's a big supporting character in the show. Fantastic. So we really had a great, the woman that plays Bonhofer's mother,

is wonderful. The one that plays the father is a very famous actor. Black Bell. Yeah. In Germany. In Germany, he's one of the leading television actors. So he joined. So we had a great cast, actually. It was very fortunate. They all came together. And most of them ended up being German.

We were here. We were focused on England. Wow. The British actors are. They're all Germans by spoke perfect English. That's amazing. What a good. And now to have Angel Studios, distributors, a film. Yeah, huge. What do you want audiences

to walk away with from this movie? There's such richness to the story, and I'm sure so many takeaways. But what would be your greatest hope? Well, I think people to emulate the courage of Bonhoeffer. I mean, Bonhofer is a great role model for everybody, especially the young people today who I think are a bit lost, in my opinion. And, you know, if they see this 27-year-old man who took on, you know,

Talk on the biggest, I mean, the worst dictatorship in the world at the time, Hitler, and stood his ground as a great role model, which is courage and vision. I mean, just amazing. So I think I just hope that he will be a good role, not just for the young people, but for everybody should be a great role model. Yeah, we've always said I wish we would love to raise up men and women, old and young, to be like Bonhofer,

to speak out when there's evil. One of the lines attributed to him, we don't know where it's, we haven't, it's not found anywhere, but it's always been attributed to Bonhoffer that he said, silence in the face of evil, is it self-evil. Not to speak is to speak, not to act, is to act. So the idea that you would not be silent, you know, wherever you are in whatever corner of the world you are in, I remember Jonas, who's not suffered like Bonhofer, the actor, when asked, you know, how did you prepare for this role? Well, he had a lot of things that he did, you know, and he read a lot of Bonhofer. But one of the things at the time when we were filming in the newspaper in Iran,

women were being beaten and killed for not wearing the headscarf. And, you know, he used that. Just wherever you are, evil is being unleashed, you know, whether it's in your neighborhood. So, and to be, if you were a Christian, to be the kind of Christian he was. He was all in. You know, there was no, he was not sitting on the fence. Not sitting on the fence. Yeah.

Indeed. Very powerful film, especially at this time in history, for any moment in history. Well, any moment, but especially today. Certainly today. I mean, the world is upside down with what's happening in Israel and all that, and people are confused about what's happening and believing the wrong party and that sort of thing. When we started this movie, we were concerned in 2012, when we started with a wow, anti-Semitism is rising again in Europe. And, of course, fast forward to today, and it's all the charts, it's awful.

So, yeah, I think God's timing, I guess. God's timing, indeed. And just on a practical American level, great timing with the film coming out just before Thanksgiving. What a powerful, powerful film to go see with family members. I was talking to my dad about it the other day, and we're already planning on going together while I'm home in Boston for Thanksgiving. But thank you all so much for your time. Thank you for your commitment, 12 years, and then making congratulations to both of you, to this amazing casting crew that have brought this film to life.

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