Tarantino’s new film featuring poster boy, Brad Pitt, brings its audience into Nazi-occupied France at the beginning of World War II during Hitler’s occupation of France.
Sarcastic, witty, and gory, it’s everything you can expect from a Tarantino film.
tripatlas.com/new is bringing you behind the scenes of Inglourious Basterds to visit some of the destinations seen in the film. Want more on movies shot around the world? Check out Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen; Angels & Demons in Rome; or Indiana Jones’ Adventure Destinations.
Behind the scenes of Inglourious Basterds: Filming locations & sets
Nazi-occupied France. The main story set in June 1944 is about a rogue, underground group of Jewish American soldiers (named “the basterds”) led by Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt). Their mission is to enter Nazi-occupied France to brutally kill Nazis by cutting out their scalps and to instill fear in the regime. Many of the scenes involving the Basterds and killing Nazis were filmed in Bad Schandu, a small village in Saxony, Germany near the border of the Czech Republic.
Fort Hahneberg near Berlin, Germany was used as the hideout forest for the Basterds. This was a military fort built in the late 1800’s as part of a defense system for the Berlin-Spandau region in Germany. Today, the fort has been surrounding with natural growth and is an important part of the local ecosystem’s bat population.
Paris, France. A second tale that Tarantino weaves into the film is the story of Shosanna Dreyfus, a Jewish girl who witnesses the execution of her family and barely escapes, but manages to do so. She flees to Paris and reappears years later as the confident Emmannuelle, the proprietress of a small theatre in Paris.
Shosanna’s Art Deco Movie Theatre in Paris is where the film climaxes It’s at the cinema that Nazi Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, chooses to feature his newest piece, Stolz der Nation (A Nation’s Pride). The red-carpet event invites the most elite and high-ranking German officials, including Hitler himself. Here Shosanna, the Basterds and the British Secret Service all plot separately to use the movie’s premiere as the staging ground to kill the German high command. The cinema was actually built on a soundstage in Babelsberg Studio.
Babelsberg Studio in Potsdam, Germany is where a lot of the filming for Inglourious Basterds took place. The Babelsberg Studio is the oldest large-scale film studio in the world. In fact, it’s rumoured that Joseph Goebbels, a father of German cinema and propaganda films (as portrayed in the movie), had used the soundstages in Babelsberg Studio for his films. It’s likely not a coincidence that Tarantino chose here to film.
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