Corrie is a brave Christian woman living in a land and a time when few people around her are courageous.
The land: The Nazi-occupied Netherlands.
The year: 1940.
Corrie and her family are members of the Dutch Reformed Church, which opposes the Nazi’s march across Europe and its persecution and rounding up of Jewish people.
And now, Corrie and her family are facing a dilemma: Should they tell the Nazi officials everything they know about their Jewish friends and neighbors? Or should they hide and even lie about the Jews in order to protect them?
The new movie The Hiding Place tells the true story of Corrie and her family, who risked everything to protect Jewish refugees from the Holocaust.
Here are three things you should know about the film:
Photo courtesy: ©The Hiding Place, used with permission.
1. It Was Adapted from a Well-Known Story
The Hiding Place became a bestselling book in the 1970s after Corrie ten Boom – then in her late 70s – allowed authors John and Elizabeth Sherrill to help her put her story in print. The Sherrills had learned of ten Boom while researching for another book, God’s Smugglers.
The story’s popularity soared to another level when the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s World Wide Pictures distributed a film by the same name.
Playwright A. S. Peterson adapted the book into a stage play. The play was commissioned in honor of Jeanette Clift George, who portrayed Corrie in the 1975 movie.
“I started writing in 2018,” Peterson said. “And since then, the world's gone through enormous upheavals, and it feels auspicious to have been given something this relevant to write about in that period, where a story was beloved by generations of people.
“We went to Amsterdam and visited Corrie's house in Haarlem,” he added. “We crawled into the hiding place ourselves – my wife and I. We spent time there getting to know the culture, the people. And then we drove across Germany to visit the Ravensbrück concentration camp where Corrie ended up at the end of the war. … I think all of that formed the shape of the play.”
Photo courtesy: ©The Hiding Place, used with permission.
2. It’s a Stage Play … with the Look of a Film
Similar to how Sight & Sound Theatres turns its musicals into a movie, the film version of The Hiding Place stage play uses up-close cinematography to give viewers a front-row seat. Actually, it’s better than that: The camera weaves in and out of the scene just as a camera does in movies. Soon, you forget you’re watching a stage play that was filmed live. The acting is top-notch. The costumes and scenery are magnificent.
Matt Logan directed it.
“We knew Hiding Place was a unique opportunity, a great story, a compelling script, and it deserved to be told right now,” Logan said.
Rabbit Room Theatre, a faith-based company, helped bring it to the stage and to the big screen. Peterson serves as its executive director.
“The Rabbit Room exists to cultivate and curate story, music and art [and] to nourish Christ-centered communities for the life of the world,” Peterson said. “... Theatre is something that we believe can change the world.” The film contains no nudity, sexuality, coarse language or graphic violence.
The stage play was performed in front of sold-out shows in Nashville.
Photo courtesy: ©The Hiding Place, used with permission.
3. It Has Lessons for Today
The biblical lessons found in the book and the movie are preeminent in the 2023 version of The Hiding Place: courage, love, selflessness, sacrifice, standing for righteousness, opposing evil, and, of course, overcoming tragedy. The movie forces us to ask: Are we willing to stand alone for Christ if everyone around us is embracing the evil ways of this world?
“Even though it's set in the 40s, the same things are still at play – people hating one another, people not accepting one another. And then Corrie’s family, in the middle of that, having to choose: How are we going to react? Are we going to love the people in front of us no matter who they are?”
The Hiding Place is in theaters on Aug. 3 and 5. Visit TheHidingPlaceFilm.com.
Photo courtesy: ©The Hiding Place, used with permission.
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.