Alina Levshin, Actress

This year she received the German Film Award as best female lead for playing a neo-Nazi in the film "Combat Girls," or Kriegerin in German. Born in Odessa, Ukraine, in 1984, Levshin moved to Berlin with her parents when she was six years old. Today, the 28-year-old still lives in the German capital today with her husband and daughter.

Alina Levshin developed her passion for acting and dance during the nine years she spent in the Children's Ensemble at the Berlin revue theater, Friedrichstadtpalast. Later, when she was studying acting, she already had her first major role in the popular television series "Im Angesicht des Verbrechens” (which means: in the face of crime) about the Russian mafia in Germany. In the series she plays Yelena, a young woman from the Ukraine who is lured to Berlin with false promises and forced into prostitution. She then went on to prove her talent in the cinema, with the film Combat Girls, or Kriegerin. Rather than a victim, in Combat Girls she plays a violent neo-Nazi perpetrator. And starting in 2013, Alina Levshin can also be seen in the successful German crime series Tatort, or "Crime Scene." 

Talking Germany'shost Peter Craven talks with Alina Levshin about extremes, investigations and elves.

Features on these issues provide subjects for discussion and enhance the conversation on Talking Germany.One topic will be how the movie Combat Girls was received and the issue of rightwing extremism and neo-Nazis in Germany. Another will be what makes the television series Tatort so special. For more than four decades, millions of viewers have been tuning in every Sunday to help detectives – commissars – from different German cities figure out who-done-it. And finally, Talking Germany will visit auditions for the Children's Ensemble at the revue theater, Friedrichstadtpalast, where children between the ages of six and sixteen have been learning how to dance, sing and act since 1947.