Escape to Life: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story

Even those of you who aren't fanatical fans of the Nobel Prize-winning Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice" and "Tonio Kroger" will be enamored by this startling and revealing documentary that focuses on his two eldest children, Erika and Klaus.
Both gay, both extremely talented in the arts themselves, and both outspoken activists against the Nazis and fascism, Klaus and Erika are homosexual heroes who've been too often waylaid by queer historians in the past. No more.
Here directors Speck and Weiss intersperse stunning footage of Germany with photographs of the Manns and interviews with their friends and relatives, along with dramatizations of Klaus' gay novels. The result is a vivid picture of what it was to be a gay bohemian in an era that first embraced you and then sought to destroy you completely. more

Film Journal International
Escape to Life: The Erika and Klaus Mann Story
Two little-known figures are magically revealed in this intriguing moving documentary.

Escape to Life is an enthralling documentary about Klaus and Erika Mann, the children of Thomas Mann, directed by Andrea Weiss and Wieland Speck. Born a year apart, they often pretended to be twins and, indeed, shared much besides their unconditional love for each other. Both gay, both artists, they struggled to establish their own identities in spite of their father’s awe-inspiring reputation. The film’s title refers to their exile from Nazi Germany in America. Klaus’ novels, with their racy depiction of a joyously libertine Weimar Germany, and Erika’s cabaret performances, which satirized Nazis, were banned and their citizenship revoked. A rift was formed with their father, when Thomas, mindful of his reputation, initially avoided speaking out against their enemies (until he, too, was forced into exile.) And the relationship of the “twins” became strained by the pressures of life in America (the FBI was on their tail), Klaus’ drug addiction and Erika’s reestablishing close contact with Thomas. more