Actresses Felice Schragenheim and Juliane Köhler, from the film "Aimée and Jaguar," flank 85-year-old Lilly Wust, on whom the film is based.

Web posted on:
Thursday, February 11, 1999 12:13:49 PM EST

BERLIN (CNN) -- A true story of the romance between a German housewife and a Jewish woman in the final days of the Nazi Reich opened the Berlin Film Festival on Wednesday, and its director credited "Schindler's List" director Steven Spielberg for making the work possible.

"I am sure a work like this would have been impossible 10 years ago," said Max Faerberboeck, director of "Aimee und Jaguar," which tells the story of Lilly Wust, a mother of four who falls in love with a Jewish journalist trying to keep one step ahead of the Gestapo amid the Allied bombing of Berlin.

"Without Steven Spielberg's 'Schindler's List,' a film like this might still be impossible," Faerberboeck told a news conference after the screening which opened Berlin's 49th annual festival. "Before that," added producer Guenter Rohrbach, "we in Germany felt we could not make entertainment from such serious subject matter."

Faerberboeck said Spielberg had opened the way for Germans to confront their past with his depiction of the Holocaust.

He rejected criticism that "Aimee und Jaguar" was mere "Holo-kitsch." He said he had deliberately avoided simple depictions of the horror.

Wust, now 85, attended the screening. She trembled with emotion as she recalled the events faithfully played out on screen.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder made an appearance at the festival

The festival, attended by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, ranks after Cannes and alongside Venice as one of the world's most prestigious film festivals.

Among the big names expected to promote their films over the course of the festival, which ends February 21 with the awarding of the Golden Bear, are directors like Spielberg, Robert Altman and Claude Chabrol and actors like Meryl Streep, Nicolas Cage and Gwyneth Paltrow. Twenty-five films are in competition for the top award.

But dampening the mood was public criticism from Schroeder's cultural adviser, Michael Naumann, that the festival was not doing enough to compete with the glitzier affair held each spring at the Mediterranean resort of Cannes.

Naumann told German radio that the Berlin festival needed to work harder to raise its profile and glamour quotient. The advantages of climate sunny Cannes has over snowy Berlin can be compensated for with "extra work," he said.

Festival director Moritz de Hadeln told Focus magazine he thought Naumann "is dreaming a little."

"Ambition is nice, but I can't bring the Mediterranean to Berlin," he said.

Reuters Limited contributed to this report.