TORONTO – Filmmaker Silvio Soldini, best known for his warm-hearted romantic comedy Bread and Tulips (2000), will soon be back in theatres with something much darker – The Tasters. This will be the director’s German language debut, an adaptation of Rosella Postorino’s International best-selling novel “At the Wolf’s Table”. The Calabrian author, Postorino, won the prestigious Campiello Prize, the Luigi Russo Prize and the Rapallo Prize for the 2018 work, titled Le Assaggiatrici.
The Tasters is a historical account of 15 women who were unfortunately tasked – over a two-year period – with tasting Adolf Hitler’s food for poison. The film is set in 1943 at the Fuhrer’s Headquarters in Wolf’s Lair, a heavily fortified command centre in present day Poland. The Tasters is “a film produced in Italy and made by an Italian director in German language with an international cast…very rare and interesting”, says Vision Distribution Managing Director Massimo Proietti. The dubbed Italian theatrical release is set for this month.
The story came to light fairly recently, 2013, when a former “taster” Margot Wölk spoke to the German magazine Der Spiegel about her role. The then 95-year-old Margot Wölk, revealed that she had spent two and a half years, along with 14 other women, sampling Hitler’s food before it went out to him. “He was a vegetarian. He never ate any meat during the entire time I was there,” Wölk said of the Fuhrer.
In her interview she explained that the Nazi leader requested young women of good German stock as his “tasters”. From his vantage point, the role was an honour – a patriotic service. From their perspective, a horrifying experience. Despite the benefit of accessing copious meals while most Germans were contending with food shortages, the women feared for their lives on a daily basis.
“The food was delicious, only the best vegetables, asparagus, bell peppers, everything you can imagine. And always with a side of rice or pasta,” recalled Wölk. “But this constant fear, we knew of all those poisoning rumors and could never enjoy the food. Every day we feared it was going to be our last meal”.
The Screenwriters for The Tasters are Cristina Comencini, Ilaria Macchia and Giulia Calenda. The film is being produced by Milan’s Lumière & Co. in co-production with Belgium’s Tarantula. Starring are Germany’s Elisa Schlott (“Das Boot” TV series), Max Riemelt (“Sleeping Dog”) and Alma Hasun (“Corsage”).
(Images courtesy of Vision Distribution)
Massimo Volpe is a filmmaker and freelance writer from Toronto: he writes reviews of Italian films/content on Netflix