Adapted by Deborah Moggach and drawing on Anne Frank’s actual words to a greater extent than any previous dramatization, “The Diary of Anne Frank” stars newcomer Ellie Kendrick (An Education) as Anne, a typical 13-year-old at the outset of the film, at odds with her mother, interested in boys, clothes, her appearance, and intrigued by her unfolding sexual development.

The MASTERPIECE production co-stars Iain Glen as Anne’s optimistic and unflappable father, Otto, and Tamsin Greig as her mother, Edith, who sees with clear-eyed horror the fate that may await them all. Felicity Jones plays Anne’s older sister, Margot, a quiet and obedient girl, who throws herself into her studies to keep from going mad.

Together with four others, they hide for two years in the back rooms of an Amsterdam business, while Anne records their tense daily life in one of history’s most remarkable memoirs.

Anne’s housemates noticed was that she threw herself into her writing with uncharacteristic seriousness and discipline. What her diary and journals held they couldn’t imagine — nor could the Nazi officer who unceremoniously dumped the seemingly mundane notebooks onto the floor, to be abandoned and later rescued for posterity.

MASTERPIECE CLASSIC