Avenue of the Giants Director Finn Taylor Knew He Couldn’t Pull Punches in Holocaust Drama
Screenwriter and director Finn Taylor filmed part of his Holocaust drama Avenue of the Giants on the site of an actual concentration camp called Theresienstadt in the Czech Republic. This film tells the true story of Holocaust survivor Herbert Heller. Herbert Heller kept the secrets of his past hidden from his family for decades until he finally decided to go public with his story in 2004. Taylor knew that in order to properly tell Heller’s life, he had to write the script as honestly as possible about the atrocities in the camp.
Avenue of the Giants Director Finn Taylor on Making Avenue of the Giants
“We went to Auschwitz to be there and experience it,” he said during a Q&A after the screening of “Avenue of the Giants” at the inaugural Jackson Hole International Film Festival over the weekend. Taylor said, “The way I write scripts has completely changed.” Since filming at the actual Auschwitz site is prohibited, Taylor recreated Auschwitz on a film set. However, they were able to fire on Theresienstadt, one of the few Nazi concentration camps not specifically used for extermination. In fact, it has become relatively easier to hide the true nature of the camp from International Red Cross inspectors and the Danish government, says Theresienstadt’s history website. Heller and his family were interned there before being deported to Auschwitz. “We actually filmed in Theresienstadt, and it was very immersive. And it’s true that it was a camp, but 30,000 people were killed there, so it wasn’t a good place at all. ” Taylor said.”
“Theresienstadt had a lot of raw things: bunks, rooms, I call them cells. There were no gardens there, so our production design team created these gardens. I created it all,” Taylor says. “We basically built Auschwitz from scratch. It was a massive undertaking. The railroad tracks were there, and then everything else was built. ” “Avenue of the Giants” stars Stephen Lang of “AVATAR” as Herbert and Elsie Fisher of “Eighth Grade” as Abby. Abby is a troubled teenager who shares her own painful secrets with Herbert and invites him to talk about her experiences at the camp. Through flashbacks, Heller tells Abby her story, including how she was sent to Auschwitz with her family at the age of 12, what she experienced there, and how she escaped from the camp at the age of 15 during the infamous Auschwitz Death March in 1945. I will tell you how it happened.
“What made me think about this whole story was the great responsibility that comes with it. But after getting to know Herbert better, I realized it was important to tell his story. “Anyone who was at Auschwitz can tell you this is not something to be taken lightly,” Taylor says. ““It will affect you and live in your bones. And it made me realize I couldn’t pull punches in telling the story. I wanted to do it, not with lots of blood or anything like that, but when I learned of the things that happened, I had to include them.” Heller’s actual interview about her experiences in the camps can be viewed on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s website. For more information about Avenue of the Giants, visit the film’s website here.