The Diary of Anne Frank

The Diary of Anne Frank (2016) is a German historical drama you can watch online on iFILM. Director Hans Steinbichler brings to the screen the journal of a Jewish teenager hiding in occupied Amsterdam, with Lea van Acken as thirteen-year-old Anne — sharp-tongued, romantic, fiercely alive.

For two years, eight people share a few cramped rooms above the warehouse run by Anne's father, Otto (Ulrich Noethen). Outside there are raids; inside there are quarrels, a first crush, and the dread of every creak on the stairs. Martina Gedeck plays the mother her daughter can barely understand. The camera rarely leaves the annex, so you wait the danger out inside those walls alongside them.

This was the first German feature to film the diary, and Steinbichler builds it around a girl growing up rather than around her death — a would-be writer dreaming of the future while history quietly closes the door. Heavy but worth it, especially if you read the diary in school. Stream The Diary of Anne Frank (2016) online on iFILM.