Leonie Benesch is particularly good at playing people trying to do right without being certain how. We rate her restraint, from the awkward affection of The White Ribbon to the pressured idealism of The Teachers’ Lounge.
Fi1m perspective
In The White Ribbon (2009), Eva and the schoolteacher have to find their way through a courtship neither makes look easy. Benesch and Christian Friedel let the awkwardness remain, and the affection is more convincing for it. We were moved by their sweetness because, among adults so practised at making children afraid, their efforts to be kind came as a relief. Benesch gives us a reason to care about Eva without asking Haneke to soften the rest of his film.
Haneke sets a difficult scale for those performances. Christian Berger’s black-and-white photography and the film’s long, severe attention to village life leave little room for an actor to push for sympathy. Benesch is effective because she lets the small embarrassment of courtship matter in its own right. The severity can become repetitive, but we would not want the courtship made brighter or broader to compensate.
Secondary parts in German films and television followed, before Greta Overbeck in Babylon Berlin (2017) brought wider notice. The Teachers’ Lounge (2023) gave her the lead as Carla Nowak, an idealistic teacher facing moral pressure. Her controlled approach suits a role built around the difficulty of doing the right thing. It also puts the person wrestling with that difficulty at the centre of the film. Her supporting role as Marianne Gebhardt in 2024 continued her work in historical settings.
There is a risk in repeatedly playing people under moral pressure: an audience can begin to admire their principles without getting interested in the person. That is why the awkwardness in Eva matters so much to us. Benesch and Friedel make us care about two people attempting a courtship, rather than simply feel grateful that someone in the village is being pleasant. Begin with The White Ribbon, but do not expect its courtship to make Haneke’s village a comfortable place to spend an evening.
Biography
Leonie Benesch is a German actress. Born on 22 April 1991 in Hamburg, she made her screen debut as a teenager in the 2009 film The White Ribbon, directed by Michael Haneke, playing the role of Eva.
She trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, graduating in 2016 after earlier studies and classes in Berlin. Benesch is known for her performances as Greta Overbeck in the series Babylon Berlin (2017–2020), Princess Cecilie in The Crown (2017), and Abigail 'Fix' Fortescue in the BBC series Around the World in 80 Days (2021). In 2023 she starred as Carla Nowak in The Teachers' Lounge, for which she won the German Film Award for Best Performance in a Leading Role. She also appeared in Persian Lessons (2020) and September 5 (2024).
For her early work in The White Ribbon she received a Young Artist Award and a New Faces Award. She won a German Screen Actors Award for her role in Babylon Berlin.
