The story of Luther begins in the year 1505 with young Luther' s experience of a storm in which a bolt of lightning - "a fright sent from heaven" - landed quite close to him and prompted him to hang up his study of law and apply for acceptance the following day in an Augustinian monastery. The film narrates further Luther's pilgrimage to Rome (1510), nailing the 95 theses on the door in Wittenberg (1517), his resistance to Cardinal Cajetan's order to recant his theses (1518) and his appearance before Emperor Charles V during the Diet of Worms (1521).

Luther's life as outlaw - excommunicated and banned by Pope as well as Emperor - is also depicted in the film, as well as his "exile" in the tower of the Wartburg castle, where he translated the entire New Testament into German within eleven weeks, and his subsequent return to Wittenberg (1522), where at that moment peasant rioters destroyed churches and attact priests and monks. Interwoven in all of these historical events: the life led by Martin Luther as a young man full of visions. Spirited with a deep faith, he was also embarrassed by serious temptations.

To today' s audience his conflicts should appear timeless through the medieval cowl. What emerges here with Luther is an unknown picture of the German reformer and, indeed, anything but invented: because in this youth lay a truly perplexing power, and it broke out as uncontrolled as naive - "willed of God as well as a force of nature" (Martin Luther). This perspective has of course been buried under a mass of pious teaching through the centuries, and is still to be found adhering to the famous portraits painted by Lucas Cranach of the old Luther: whoever knows only these must believe that the corpulent family man seen there had never been young.

Directed by
Eric Till

Cast
Joseph Fiennes - Martin Luther
Peter Ustinov - Prince Frederick
Alfred Molina - Johann Tetzel
Bruno Ganz - Johann von Staupitz
Jonathan Firth - Girolamo Aleandro
Mathieu Carriere - Cardinal Cajetan
Uwe Ochsenknecht - Pope Leo XII
Claire Cox - Katharina von Borg

Production Co.
NFP Teleart GmbH & Co. KG
NFP
Degeto Film

Produced by
Dennis Clauss
Kurt Rittig
Gabriela Pfandner

Studio
R.S. Entertainment

Writer
John Osbourne
Camille Thomasson
Bart Gavigan

Music
Richard Harvey