VIKTORIA SAVS
The Emperor’s Soldier
SCRIPT and DIRECTOR Karin Duregger
CAMERA Jochen Unterhofer, Manfred Unterpertinger
SOUND Jiri Gasperi, Stefano Bernardi
EDITING Florian Geiser
SERVICE-PRODUCTION Ammirafilm, Meran
PRODUCER Peter Thomsen
FORMAT HDTV 16:9 stereo
LENGTH 51:43
PRODUCED 2017-2018
COMPLETED 2018
Synopsis
Viktoria Savs was born in 1899 in Bad Reichenhall, Bavaria; she and her father moved to Merano in what is today South Tyrol in 1903. In the First World War she serves in the Austro-Hungarian Army at the Dolomite front. Though her superiors know she is a woman, she is disguised as a man, completely fooling her comrades and the press. At least, for a while.
But that soon changes when she is wounded and exposed as a young girl at the front – only to be promptly hailed as a heroine, stylized by the media with a gun in her hand. In 1933, when Hitler seizes power in Germany, the ideological propaganda war is launched. And the story of the disabled war veteran Viktoria Savs provides ideal material.
One photograph shows her at a table, surrounded by senior SS officers. The film traces the path taken by Viktoria Savs from a young girl at the front to a seat at that table.
