The Diary of a Young Girl

The Diary of a Young Girl is a 2002 historical drama directed by Kenneth Branagh and produced by Steven Spielberg and David Barron. It is based on the posthumously published diary of Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who lived in hiding with her family during World War II. The film stars Ben Kingsley, Tamsin Greig, Brenda Blethyn, Robin Williams, Nicholas Farrell, Kate Ashfield, Geoff Breton, Felicity Jones, with Alec Guinness in his last film role as an elderly Otto Frank and Hannah Taylor-Gordon as Anne Frank.

All Frank's writings to her diary were addressed as "Dear Kitty". It was published after the end of the war by her father, Otto Frank (played in the film by Kingsley and Guinness). All of his family members had been killed by the Nazis. Filming originally began in June 2000 but was temporally halted when Guinness died from cancer in August of that year. Guinness was ill during production, and he was meant to narrate most of the film, but his major scenes were completed prior to his death. Filming immediately resumed in early 2001.

Plot
The film begins in January 1979 at a resort in the Swiss countryside, as a somber Otto Frank looks out towards the Alps. He is going to turn 90 in May, but also realizes that his youngest daughter would have been 50 in June. He welcomes in a journalist from the Hague, who hopes to interview Frank for the 50th anniversary of Anne's birth.