Variety's Eddie Cockrell sums up this German thriller:

"The moral quandary of Nazi complicity is revisited in taut drama "The Counterfeiters," which tells the true story of a disparate group of imprisoned artists, financiers and swindlers secretly assembled in a concentration camp to forge millions of pound and dollar notes to support the German war effort. "

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Featuring superb performances from top German stars Karl Markovics, August Diehl and Sebastian Urzendowsky, Die Fälscher is definitely one to watch!

Review by Rod White

The rehabilitation of German cinema continues apace, in tandem with that country’s recent willingness to return to those darkest of hours in its history, World War II.

In a brief prologue set in 1945, a gaunt, haunted-looking man in a threadbare suit arrives at a Monte Carlo casino with a suitcase full of American dollars. Flashback to 1936, and the same man, now identified as Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics, perfectly cast), Jewish artist-turned-swindler and playboy, is finally tracked down by his policeman nemesis and sent to the brutal Malthausen concentration camp, where his obsequious compliance and his talent as an artist soon have him living an easier existence than his fellow prisoners. Five years on, he is transferred to the camp at Sachsenhausen where the man who put him away in the first place is now the camp’s commandant, tasked with a very special mission – a mission for which he has selected “Sally” specifically…

Taking a less direct emotional route into its subject matter than recent German films covering a similar period (Downfall; Sophie Scholl – The Final Days), Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky’s brilliant, gripping film tells the story of the biggest banknote counterfeiting operation in history. Inside the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, the Nazis assembled a group of financiers, printers, criminals and artists, in an attempt to produce enough counterfeit US dollars and British pounds to flood, and ruin, their respective economies.

At the centre of the film is the huge moral dilemma – how far should you go to save your own skin when you know your complicity could mean the deaths of so many others? And to what extent can anyone be held responsible for acts committed on pain of death? For the self-serving Salomon survival is everything; not so his fellow inmate and chief antagonist Adolf Burger (August Diehl), in real life the man from whose memoir, The Devil’s Workshop, the film is adapted. Ruzowitzky (no stranger to EIFF; he was here with The Inheritors in 1998, and Anatomie in 2000) eschews the traditional representation of the concentration camp – we only ever see the relatively comfortable barracks supplied for the counterfeiters, though we do hear the shots and screams from the horrors going on behind the walls – and focuses instead, with a rare intelligence and to devastating effect, on the ethical questions raised within the relationship between the two men and their overseer.

[ Official movie site ] [ Film review at European-films.net ]

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Comments (2)

Missed it, want to see it!

When this film was released I so wanted to see it. I love August Diehl and the story sounds very intriguing, still I missed it when it entered the cinemas. :sigh All my hope lies with the movie rental now...

Films dealing with such terrifying topics are hard to watch but I find them to be so important for us and especially for future generations to understand the power of inhumanity and the need to fight it.

Rina H. , September 26, 2007

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Ever since I saw him in Love in Thoughts, I have been trying to do research about Herr Diehl! I think he's one of the most talented actors in Europe, and I know we'll come up with something to show. I'm waiting for the copy of my DVD (The Counterfeiters), so I would be looking forward to his performance yet again, and the cast also includes Sebastian Urzendowsky, whom we'll be featuring in the HotList section as well!

Admin , October 05, 2007

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