'Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe'

Stefan Zweig, the most-translated German-language writer of his time alongside Thomas Mann, felt his life was threatened in Europe with the rise of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. The Nazis banned Zweig's works early on. Born in Vienna in 1881, Zweig made the difficult decision to leave his homeland for London in 1934, and after a stopover in the US eventually settled in Brazil in 1940.

German actress Maria Schrader has had a successful career on film and stage for years. In 2007, she tried her hand at directing with her first film, an impressive adaptation of the novel "Love Life" by Israeli author Zeruya Shalev. "Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe" is Schrader's second directorial effort.

Schrader's film isn't a strict narrative retelling of the author's biography. Instead, she has divided Zweig's life in exile into six cinematic episodes. In the prologue, the famous author (portrayed by Josef Hader, right) arrives at a reception in Buenos Aires, greeted like a state visitor with a lavish banquet.

Coinciding with his 1936 arrival in Buenos Aires is the 14th International Congress of PEN International, an internationally esteemed conference of writers who welcomed Zweig as guest of honor. Many expected Zweig to distance himself from Germany with harsh words and condemnation. But he remained skeptical. He didn't see himself as a political mouthpiece - and Germany remained his cultural home.

The third episode in Schrader's film shows Zweig and his second wife Lotte (Aenne Schwarz) at home in Bahia, in northeastern Brazil. It was there that the author, so deeply rooted in European culture and history, wrote a book on South America: "Brazil: A Land of the Future."

Zweig's exile in Brazil was interrupted in 1941 by a meeting with his first wife Friderike (Barbara Sukowa) in New York. The former couple still had a friendly relationship. She, too, had fled Europe and brought with her a stack of petitions, urging Zweig to commit himself to the cause of Europe's oppressed authors. But the writer himself was in a precarious situation.

After his visit to the US, Zweig once again headed back to Brazil, looking for peace and quiet. Along with his second wife, he moved to the town of Petropolis, a two-hour drive north of Rio de Janeiro. It was there that writer Ernst Feder (Matthias Brandt), the former head of the newspaper "Berliner Tageblatt," came looking for him. Feder became a close confidant of the exiled writer.

But despite all the peace and seclusion, life wasn't easy for Stefan Zweig. The loss of his homeland was unbearable and the feeling of powerlessness to change the terrible course of events in Europe was too much to cope with. Zweig and his wife Lotte committed double suicide in February 1942.