One of Europe’s most celebrated stage and screen actors, Swiss-born BrunoGanz (b.1941), with more than than 60 starring film roles to his credit , has a legendary reputation for a seven-hour role as “Faust” in Peter Stein’s 2000 theater production in Berlin’s Arena. It is his new role as Adolf Hitler in the currently playing film”Downfall”, dealing with Hitler’s pathetic last 12 days in the bunker, that provides him with one of his most challenging roles. “How do you portray a person whom you despise and all he stands for?” says Ganz in this recent portrait, showing him preparing for the part that has been attracting record German viewers to the cinema. The ambitious but modest Ganz who drifted into acting as a teenager in Zurich student drama established a stage reputation in his twenties with a string of distinguished German directors until film took over . He has starred in such films as Wim Wenders’ The Åmerican Friend,Left-Handed Woman,and markedly in the l987 Wings of Desire; Eric Rohmer’s Marquise of O, Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu, Eric Till’s Luther. His comedic side emerges in the popular Bread and Tulips as the suicidal Italian waiter in Venice. Wenders fans, theater students, German studies types as well as the general public can meet Ganz, his mother, his film and theater colleagues at rehearsals in this engaging portrait. Norbert Wiedmer was born in 1953 in Bern. He studied in Paris and Munich and graduated from HFF (Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film) in Munich in 1980. From 1980-82 he worked as a scientific assistant for the documentary film department at the HFF. Since 1982 he has worked as an independent filmmaker, cameraman, cutter, and lecturer.  –A.M.