Variety says the makers of love story The Reader, which stars Nicole Kidman and Ralph Fiennes, have been denied permission to shoot scenes at Sachsenhausen concentration camp, north of Berlin.
The Weinstein Company release is being directed by Stephen Daldry and produced by Mirage Productions partners Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack.
In the film, which is set in contemporary Germany, a man recounts the story of his erotic awakening in a covert love affair with an older woman in the wake of WWII. filming begins this week on the project.
Horst Seferens, a spokesman for the curators at Sachsenhausen, said that the filmmakers had written to inquire if they could use the memorial for a key scene, but the request was turned down.
Only documentary filmmakers are allowed to use the site, which is now a memorial to the millions of Jews killed in the Holocaust, he said.
“Former concentration camp sites are cemeteries it’s just not appropriate to use them as film sets,” he said.
