Valerie Pachner

In A Hidden Life (2019), Valerie Pachner makes working a farm with August Diehl feel like something a couple have done together for years. As Fani Jägerstätter, she gives the marriage an equality that matters: this woman has work to do and consequences to bear, as well as a husband to love. We were moved by their ease together, because it made the possibility of separation hurt. Terrence Malick’s attention to their shared daily life gives that feeling time to develop.

The early screen parts included Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe (2016), directed by Maria Schrader, and Wally Neuzil in Egon Schiele: Death and the Maiden (2016). Her breakthrough came with A Hidden Life and Marie Kreutzer’s The Ground Beneath My Feet (2019). In the latter, Pachner plays Lola Wegenstein, a business consultant under pressure, using small changes in expression and physical bearing to suggest what she is containing. These parts ask for different behaviour, but both depend on her ability to make self-control interesting.

For Malick, that physical conviction had practical preparation behind it: Pachner read the couple’s letters and learnt farm work. The result is a wife who feels accustomed to a shared daily life, rather than placed beside the leading man to lend him sympathy. Diehl gives her a firm presence to work against, although his character’s certainty leaves him relatively little uncertainty to play. James Newton Howard’s music adds warmth to their scenes together without doing the actors’ work for them. The film repeats points it has already made, but Pachner sustains our interest in what those points mean for the marriage.

International supporting parts followed in The King’s Man (2021) and The English (2022), alongside continued theatre and German-language film work.