The winner of this year’s Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film was a sell-out when it opened the German Film Festival last month and it returns to Cinema Paradiso this month. It is based on the incredible true story of a group of Jewish men who survived the Holocaust. Austrian writer/director Stephan Ruzowitzky’s tense drama centres on Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), an expert forger in pre-war Berlin. In a concentration camp north of Berlin, he becomes the central person in ‘Operation Bernhard’ – the Nazi counterfeiting operation aimed at bankrupting England and America.

Detective Herzog (Devid Strieson) arrested Sorowitsch before the war but now, as camp commandant, he rewards Sorowitsch for his cooperation with sheets, nutritious food, cigarettes and immunity from beatings. Separated by a high fence from the rest of the camp, the counterfeiters can hear the brutality that surrounds them and they question how many moral compromises they will need to make in order to survive. When printer Aldolf Burger (August Diehl) points out that in saving their own lives, they are actually costing the lives of others by extending the life of the Nazi regime, the group becomes divided on whether they should sabotage their work of reproducing currency.

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The audience is not spared the brutality of this very grim time in world history, though the film does challenge some stereotypes as Herzog too shows that all he wants to do is survive. This interesting film not only recreates a unique event, it also leaves the audience to reflect on what they would do to survive.

Directed by Stephan Ruzowitzky. Rated MA.