Director Helma Sanders-Brahms reached back into her own wartime childhood for her best known film, Germany Pale Mother (Deutschland bleiche Mutter). The film is based on the life of Sanders-Brahms' mother, fictionalized in the person of Eva Mattes. Ms. Mattes marries Nazi soldier Ernst Jacobi, remaining loyal to her largely absent husband through the fall of Germany and the grim postwar era. The couple has a daughter, for whom the aggressively independent Mattes tries to provide even as those around her starve to death. Originally released in 1980 Germany Pale Mother received its general American release four years later.