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Inspired by the true story of the so-called 'blond poison', while Jews in hiding knew her as the "Blonde Lorelei". She was also referred to as "the blonde ghost". Stella, a young Jewish girl who the Nazis turned into their main weapon to gain access to Jews during the Second World War. Stella, grows up in Berlin during the rule of the Nazi regime. She dreams of a career as a jazz singer, despite all the repressive measures she is forced to go into hiding with her parents in 1944, her life turns into a culpable tragedy. She then collaborated with the Gestapo during World War II, operating around Berlin exposing and denouncing Berlin's underground Jews, after being tortured in Gestapo custody and falsely being promised the safety of her family. The number of people she betrayed or delivered to the Nazis has been estimated at anywhere from 600 to 3,000.

Starring the rising German star Paula Beer who has already starred in some good films, such as: Roter Himmel (2023), Undine (2020), The Wolf's Call (2019), Never Look Away (2018), Transit (2018) and especially Frantz (2016) by Francois Ozon, she gives a decent but overacted performance as the evil informer who ruthlessly hands over the unfortunate Jews to the Gestapo. The film reflects with brutal realism the life and circumstances of a woman willing to do anything to save herself from being taken to Auschwitz. The film unfolds and brings to light poignant questions, such as: Can an ordinary person become a real monster?. What was Stella, a victim or an executioner?

The film is acceptable and passable, but not remarkable, the narration is very disjointed, there is no order or harmony in the development, and it contains too many camera movements and a lot of zooms. Its director, Killian Riedhorf, stated that with this story "Every time we found reasons that justified her, other reasons arose to consider her guilty. Each spectator must form his own opinion."

Adding more details about his hectic and treacherous life, these are the following: Stella and her family fell on hard times when the 1933 Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service was used to purge Jews from positions of influence and her father Gerhard lost his job with the newsreel company Gaumont. Her parents attempted to leave Germany after Kristallnacht in 1938 to escape the Nazi regime, but were unable to gain visas for other countries. Goldschlag and her parents, who had also been working as forced labourers by then, were arrested as part of the Fabrikaktion. Goldschlag was taken to a women's prison where she was interrogated and tortured; in1943 she managed to escape briefly during a visit to the dentist but was quickly rearrested as she sought refuge in her parents' home which was already being watched by the Gestapo and she was brutally tortured once more after being recaptured. In order to avoid the deportation of herself and her parents,she agreed to become a "catcher" for the Gestapo, hunting down Jews hiding as non-Jews . Goldschlag at first gave up names of Jewish fugitives only under torture, which happened for the first time after her failed escape attempt when she was captured with a list of names that included that of a Jewish man named Mikki Hellmann who had provided her with a forged passport and whom Goldschlag lured into a trap after which he was captured. However, she would later start to collaborate with the Gestapo more willingly. She was promised that she and her parents would not be deported plus a reward of 300 Reichsmark for each Jew that she betrayed while she operated mostly around Berlin. The Nazis would break their promise of sparing the lives of Goldschlag's parents. They were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp on 23 February 1944. Goldschlag pleaded with her superiors to spare her parents but to no avail but was promised to become a honorary Aryan after the war. Her parents were later transported to Auschwitz and murdered. Goldschlag's husband, Manfred, was deported in 1943 to Auschwitz, along with his family. It was the belief of his family that Goldschlag had betrayed even her own husband and in-laws to the Nazis. While the claim is not unbelievable given the circumstances, the Kübler family was deported before Goldschlag's collaboration with the Nazis began. While Goldschlag continued to hunt down Jews, she and her fellow "catchers", numbering around 15 to 20 by this time in Berlin, were also the target for revenge from their potential victims.

She was found by the Soviets in October 1945 and arrested for collaboration. In custody, Goldschlag still claimed to have been victimized during the Holocaust, both as a cover and in order to claim Victim of Fascism. After the war, Goldschlag "converted to Christianity and became an open anti-Semite". Brought to trial, Goldschlag was found guilty and sentenced to ten years of hard labor in June 1946. There she was again tried, convicted, and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment in 1957 for being an accessory in several counts of murder. During this second trial, Goldschlag denied all charges and claimed she was the victim of a Jewish conspiracy against her. Despite being convicted she did not have to serve the second sentence because of the time already served in the Soviet prison. During the second trial, a psychiatrist diagnosed Goldschlag as a "schizophrenic psychopath". In 1994, Goldschlag was found dead by drowning in the Moosweiher. Her death is generally reported as a suicide, although other sources mention that she accidentally drowned, or that she committed suicide by leaping out of a window.

I have been an admirer of Paula Beer since seeing her in "Frantz" and "Undine". I have no doubt that she would be more than capable of portraying the complexities of a woman like Stella Goldschlag, to the point where, while not accepting the decisions she made, one might at least be able to understand the reasons that she made them. That belief remains true, but sadly, Kilian Riedhof's film is not her chance. While technically capable, and with superior attention to period detail, "Stella: A Life" - particularly in its last two thirds - fails in the prime area of narrative cinema: "Storytelling". Indicators of Stella's motivations are lost in what becomes a frustrating series of virtual jump cuts, and the audience is left to fill in the gaps to try and understand what has not been shown. The protagonist's evolution from "victim" to "villain" seems to have been left in the cutting room floor, and all that remains of Beer's performance is a slide show, rather than a fully developed characterisation. It is disappointing to see this wasted opportunity discuss a (still) largely unexamined aspect of such a pivotal epoch of social history.