Elizabeth Noel's "Beneath the Edelweiss," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Beneath the Edelweiss by Elizabeth Noel.

The entry begins:

If Beneath the Edelweiss became a movie, new ground in disability representation would be broken. Hurray! The main protagonist, Mitzi Hausler, is an alpine herbalist in training. She is short-statured and this is viewed by her superstitious community as an impediment to her ability to heal the sick with herbs. Oma says, Mitzi is beautiful, but no one will marry her. She gives Mitzi the herbs because she believes Mitzi will have nothing else. As Oma ages and war creeps closer she seems to realize she is wrong when she tells Mitzi, “We’re all made in the image of God. Jesus bled. His body leaked just like mine and yours. You must rise above flesh like everyone else. Do you understand?”

Mitzi does rise above other people’s attitudes, becoming an herbalist in her own right. However, she comes of age during Austria’s annexation to Nazi Germany, and as the veil of Nazism is pulled back, Mitzi must make life changing choices about herself and the people under her care.

My first casting would be Hollis Jane Andrews, an L.A. actress who I came across...[read on]

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My Book, The Movie: Beneath the Edelweiss.

--Marshal Zeringue