“My Dear Hanna” is the story of forbidden love between the granddaughter of one of Hungary’s most renowned Jewish industrialists and a rising star of Hungary’s Foreign Ministry, a Christian who was defiant in the face of his country’s alliance with the Nazis. The depth of their enduring love story is told by their daughter who found a trove of letters more than sixty years after they were written.
From Director Matt Sullivan and award-winning Executive Producers Justin Jarrett and Travis Capacete comes “My Dear Hanna”. Marianne Szegedy-Maszak’s parents, Hanna and Aladár, met and fell in love in Budapest in1939. He was a rising star in the foreign ministry and vocal anti-Fascist who was in talks with the Allies when he was arrested and sent to Dachau. She was the granddaughter of Manfred Weiss, the industrialist patriarch of a large Jewish aristocratic family when the Germans invaded Hungary in March 1944, and they were forced into hiding. In a secret and controversial deal brokered with Heinrich Himmler, the family turned over their vast holdings in exchange for their safe passage to Portugal. This intimate love story is framed by a cache of letters written between 1940 and 1947 that tell of young love, the pain and sorrow of separation, the looming historic catastrophe, and the enduring nature of bonds forged during the upheaval of Europe during World WarII. At once, intimate, and epic, My Dear Hanna also tells of the complicated relationship that Hungary had with its Jewish population—and with the rest of the world.
