Corrie ten Boom’s Story of Courage, Forgiveness Returns to Big Screen
By Movieguide® Contributor
A stage adaptation of THE HIDING PLACE is coming to the big screen, telling the remarkable true story of Corrie ten Boom and her family’s bold defiance during WWII as they house hundreds of Jewish refugees in Nazi-controlled Netherlands.
The play was adapted by A. S. Peterson from ten Boom’s memoir and was directed by Matt Logan. The version coming to movie theaters was filmed live during a four-week, sold-out run at the Soli Deo Center in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2022.
“One of the things I think is so remarkable about the ten Booms is they were committed to fighting the war with hospitality,” Peterson told The Christian Post. “They were committed to kindness, to loving their neighbors at the risk of their own safety. They were willing to love people that believed other than they did, which is a really remarkable thing. The world needs more of that.”
Peterson believes the story is timeless and will always have something for people to connect with.
“As Christians, we’re called to love our neighbors,” he said. “The Bible doesn’t say, ‘Love your neighbors if.” It just says, ‘Love your neighbors.’ The ten Booms are such a great example of how that works out and can actually change the world.”
“If you followed the family trees of the refugees that they saved, there is a whole, exponentially growing section of the world that wouldn’t exist without them,” he continued. “And that’s thanks exclusively to their attempts to love their neighbor, without concern for their own safety.”
The ten Booms’ story has previously been told on the big screen through a 1975 biography. Taking inspiration from the original, Peterson believes his version captures an even greater potential of the story, and by bringing the updated version on screen, he hopes the story can inspire a new generation.
“What we’ve captured on film is actually THE HIDING PLACE 2.0,” he said. “In a lot of ways, it’s the same show, but it is an evolution of that show in ways that I’m really excited about. It’s the fuller realization of the show.”
The movie highlights the difficulties of staying faithful to the Lord in the worst times and emphasizes the goodness that can come from this faithfulness.
“Corrie struggled, as I would have struggled with, ‘Why is this happening if God is sovereign?’” Corrie’s actor, Nan Gurley, explained. “And then at the end, ‘How in the world do I forgive?’ We get to see Corrie do this in the play and now, thankfully, in the film, as well.”
Peterson hopes that Corrie’s struggle with real questions will allow audiences to connect with the characters and story in a way that impacts how they live out their faith.
THE HIDING PLACE will show in select North American theaters only on August 3 and August 5 and show on August 16 in various international territories.
Movieguide® previously reported on ten Boom:
In an article from 1972, Corrie recalled how she came face to face with one of the concentration camp guards where her sister died.
“It was in a church in Munich that I saw him, a balding heavyset man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands. People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken, moving along the rows of wooden chairs to the door at the rear,” she wrote. “It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives.
“It was the truth they needed most to hear in that bitter, bombed-out land, and I gave them my favorite mental picture. Maybe because the sea is never far from a Hollander’s mind, I liked to think that that’s where forgiven sins were thrown,” she continued, adding: “‘When we confess our sins,’ I said, ‘God casts them into the deepest ocean, gone forever.’”
Corrie remembered that her audiences, often groups of German, left her talks in silence.
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