Academy Award Winner - Best Foreign Language Film
Best Foreign Language Film, Golden Globe Awards + Grand Prize, Cannes Film Festival
"A stunning piece of art. It is unlike anything you have seen before. It is both the power of history and the remarkable power of cinema in one complete package. An essential film." -Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com
"This film is a must-see because it has an unimaginable power. It is a cinmeatic masterpiece that overwhelms the body and the mind." -Anne Sinclair, Huffington Post
"Extraordinary. Formally daring and narratively gripping. An astonishing feature debut by the Hungarian director László Nemes." -Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post
October 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau. Géza Röhrig gives as astonishing lead performance as Saul Ausländer, a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando, the group of Jewish prisoners isolated from the camp and forced to assist the Nazis in the machinery of large-scale extermination. While working in one of the crematoriums, Saul discovers the body of a boy he takes for his son. As the Sonderkommando plans a rebellion, Saul decides to carry out an impossible task: save the child's body from the flames, find a rabbi to recite the mourner's Kaddish and offer the boy a proper burial.
Included in many year-end Best Films of 2015 lists including:
- J. Hoberman, Tablet
- Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal
- Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York
- Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly
- Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair
- Eric Kohn, Indiewire
- The Playlist (Indiewire)
- Anne Thompson, Thompson on Hollywood (Indiewire)
- Sight + Sound