Completed - GERMAN - Drama, Comedy - 109 minutes
What happens when an SS man puts on concentration-camp attire and a Jew slips into the SS man's uniform?
Year of production : 2010 Director(s) : Wolfgang MURNBERGER Writer(s) : Paul HENGGE Cast : Moritz BLEIBTREU, Georg FRIEDRICH, Ursula STRAUSS, Uwe BOHM, Marthe KELLER, Udo SAMEL Producer(s) : Josef AICHHOLZER (Aichholzer Filmproduktion GmbH)
Poland 1943: An unlikely pair – a concentration camp prisoner and a captain in Hitler’s notorious SS - free themselves from the wreckage of a crashed SS airplane. The two appear to be strangely familiar with each other… Vienna 1938: Victor Kaufmann (Moritz Bleibtreu), the son of Jewish art dealers (Udo Samel and Marthe Keller) and Rudi Smekal (Georg Friedrich), have been close friends since early childhood. Rudi, who comes from a humble background, owes a lot to Victor’s cosmopolitan parents and walks in and out their house with the familiarity of a family member. The friends though, are also rivals, as they compete for the attentions of the beautiful Lena (Ursula Strauss). It isn’t long before the Kaufmann family lands in a concentration camp, where they are shocked to discover that Rudi has actually been an illegal Nazi for a long time. As the tides of war slowly turn for the Germans, Rudi, who has in the meantime become an SS officer, takes his old friend Victor out of the concentration camp on a special mission. A precious drawing of Michelangelo that is intended to be presented to Mussolini as a gift – one that had been in the possession of the Kaufmann family and of which only a single copy exists - has disappeared. Their airplane crashes over Poland and Rudi is only injured - Victor has saved his life. The balance of power between the two now shifts, launching Victor on a desperate gamble that demands as much luck as it does his intelligence and all of his wits. Clothes are being swapped, parts are changed, enemies suddenly become friends and even Lena becomes an involuntary player in this poker game whose outcome could equally result in either life or death…
Country(ies) : AUSTRIA, LUXEMBOURG
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Berlinale - Berlin IFF 2011 Competition