Above: The life story of resistance fighter hannie Schaft, The Red Head, in pre-production of a major prestige motion picture with filming to begin later this year.
She wasn’t a soldier nor celebrity nor attention seeker. In fact, if she hadn’t been captured by the Nazis, you never would have heard of her. She was a young woman who loved her family, friends and neighbors, who chose to risk everything in a world gone mad. She rescued the persecuted, sabotaged a tyrannical regime, assassinated Nazis and refused to betray a single resistance fighter. Her name was Hannie Schaft. She was the only woman on Hitler’s most wanted list. Hitler personally ordered her capture.
Above: The Red Head, is set to be filmed in Prague in the Fall of 2026.
Director Timothy Hines, whose current movie The Wilde Girls, just released to streaming, explains about his upcoming feature film, The Red Head, “The Nazis feared Hannie Shaft as a spectre. She could be anyone, anywhere. She was the thing that went bump in the night. But Hannie’s resistance was flesh and blood; courage realized in real time, when silence was easier. After having risked her life countless times to stand up to the Third Reich, Hannie was only 24 when she was captured and executed. Defiant to the end, her last words when she was shot and still standing, were, ‘You idiots. I shoot better than you.’
“Five years,” continued Hines, “That’s how long it took Susan Goforth and I to write the novel and screenplay of Hannie Shaft’s life. We dove deep into this work, becoming scholars of the life of Hannie Schaft – the Dutch resistance hero known as the girl with the red hair.”
“I remember being grabbed by reading about the Oversteegen sisters and other female resistance fighters in World War II,” adds producer co-writer Susan Goforth, “Still floating on the success of 10 Days In A Madhouse amplifying 1800s journalist, Nellie Bly, back into the world’s conscience, Hannie Schaft’s story stood out as a life story worth magnifying to the world.”
The motion picture of Hannie Shaft’s life, The Red Head is planned as a fall production mounted in Prague, on sets doubling for the Netherlands in 1942 to 1945. Hines and Goforth are working with executive producer Kimberly Olsen. Olsen, whose last production as one of the executive producers on the soon to be released James Gray film, Paper Tiger, starring Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver and Miles Teller, refers to The Red Head as her “passion project”. Ms. Olsen is also contributing as creative producer on the prestige World War II movie.
Above: The Red Head, passion project of director Timothy Hines and producers Susan Goforth and executive producer Kimberly Olsen will focus on the inner person of Hannie Schaft, legendary WWII resistance fighter.
Susan Goforth continues, “We weren’t just writing on instinct. Everything about Hannie needed to be verified and sourced from the beginning of time – not someone else’s retelling. Cue a montage of years combing through Dutch archives – you’d think I’d be Dutch-fluent by now – translating historical documents, deciphering microfiche newspaper articles, watching grainy footage, and debating every sentence like it carried the weight it truly does. This wasn’t research shrugged over lots of coffee. This was living inside a past that refuses to let us look away.”
Director Hines concluded, “Hannie Schaft was a fascinating woman. We all want to tell the story of how a teenager with hopes and dreams became, for the Nazis, the avenging angel of death. We read hundreds of primary sources. We translated eyewitness accounts. We argued over every line that turned intoThe Red Head novel and the screenplay based on that, because this wasn’t just a story. It was a life that mattered.
“There are stories you write quickly and stories you live for years. The Red Head is the latter.”
All three of the creative team agree that Hannie’s story needs to be told now, because films move hearts and souls faster than any other medium. In a time when authoritarianism creeps and nuance is forgotten, The Red Head stands as a cinematic reminder that resistance matters. Always.
Media Contact
Company Name: Pendragon Pictures
Contact Person: Susan Goforth
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Phone: +1 310-480-0837
City: Los Angeles
State: CA
Country: United States
Website: www.pendragonpictures.com