12 poignant films about concentration camps

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

These pictures are incredibly difficult to watch, but necessary.

1. The fate of a person

• USSR, 1959.
• Drama.
• Duration: 97 minutes.
• IMDb: 8, 0.

The driver Andrei Sokolov goes to fight at the front, where he gets a shell shock and ends up in a concentration camp. Having survived monstrous hardships, he miraculously avoids being shot and escapes from captivity. However, very terrible news awaits the hero at home.

Debutant Sergei Bondarchuk made a film based on the story of the same name by Mikhail Sholokhov on a very complex topic. The fact is that the soldiers who were captured and survived were considered traitors and it was not customary to talk about this in the Soviet Union at that time. But "The Fate of Man" rehabilitated this huge group of people in the eyes of the audience.

2. The Great Escape

• USA, 1963.
• War drama.
• Duration: 172 minutes.
• IMDb: 8, 2.

In a special POW camp, the Nazis are gathering American, Canadian and British soldiers who have tried to escape before - to keep an eye on everyone at the same time. But that doesn't stop Air Force Major Roger Bartlett. Together with his allies, he is developing a plan for the most ambitious escape from a concentration camp in history, only after its implementation, not everyone will survive.

Until a certain point, fiction films were very careful about the topic of camps. Some of the first to start filming about this were American classics Billy Wilder and John Sturges. The latter just created the legendary "Great Escape". But this film was only appreciated many years after its release.

Sturges' unique approach is that he combined war drama, humor and adventure. As a result, the picture is a bit like robbery films in its structure and is very dynamic.

3. Sophie's choice

• UK, USA, 1982.
• Drama, melodrama.
• Duration: 157 minutes.
• IMDb: 7, 6.

The young writer Stingo arrives in New York and shares a house with an interesting couple, Sophie and Nathan. Soon they become his friends and the naive guy learns much more about the life of these people than he wanted.

In the drama of Alan Pakula "Sophie's Choice", Meryl Streep got a difficult role. The heroine cannot forget how, during the war years, the SS sadist forced her to make a monstrous choice. And the actress revealed her character with amazing depth.

4. Shoah

• France, 1985.
• Documentary.
• Duration: 566 minutes.
• IMDb: 8, 7.

Among the feature films about concentration camps, one must definitely mention one documentary - Claude Lanzmann's masterpiece "Shoah". The director did not use archival footage, but instead showed the faces and voices of real participants in the events. Moreover, among those who gave interviews, there were not only victims, but also executioners.

Nine hours of timekeeping will be a real challenge for the audience in every sense of the word. But to go through such an experience is simply necessary in order to grow up and fully realize the horror of the war.

5. Schindler's list

• USA, 1993.
• Drama, biography.
• Duration: 195 minutes.
• IMDb: 8, 9.

The manufacturer Oskar Schindler has excellent relations with the highest ranks of the German army. But he also spends a lot of money to rescue Jews from concentration camps. Thanks to his efforts, it is possible to save the lives of hundreds of people.

In Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, the metamorphosis of Liam Neeson's character makes an indelible impression: the hero starts out as a cynical businessman, but gradually becomes a completely different person. Needless to say, this film is considered one of the most powerful Holocaust dramas.

6. Life is beautiful

• Italy, 1997.
• Drama, comedy.
• Duration: 116 minutes.
• IMDb: 8, 6.

A Jew named Guido comes to Italy. He is about to open a bookstore and falls in love with his teacher Dora. The heroes marry and become the parents of their son Josue, but their mutual happiness is destroyed by the Nazis who came to power.

Roberto Benigni did what no one had dared to do before: he combined the theme of the Holocaust and humor. At the same time, the director did not cross the line of good taste. So, in terms of the importance of the statement, his work deserves to be next to the "Schindler's List".

7. Counterfeiters

• Austria, Germany, 2007.
• Drama.
• Duration: 95 minutes.
• IMDb: 7, 6.

A concentration camp prisoner, the counterfeiter Solomon Sorovitz, is tasked with forging the dollars and pounds needed by the Reich. From now on, the hero, together with his assistants, lives much better than the rest of the prisoners. But he perfectly understands that at the end of the war, he and his comrades will become unnecessary and they will simply be destroyed.

Speaking of the horrors of concentration camps, the drama of the Austrian director Stefan Ruzovicki is rarely remembered unfairly, and in vain. The movie is based on real events (although the story, at first glance, is absolutely fantastic), and the main character is not perfect. He is not a hero at all and only thinks about how to survive until the end of the war. But for such honesty, the film eventually earned an Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film nomination.

8. Boy in striped pajamas

• UK, USA, 2008.
• Drama.
• Duration: 94 minutes.
• IMDb: 7, 8.

The German boy Bruno is still too young to know anything about the horrors of World War II. One day his father gets a promotion, and the whole family is forced to move from Berlin to a remote province. Exploring the neighborhood out of boredom, Bruno finds a strange farm with people walking in striped numbered pajamas.

Mark Herman's film was shot in a very simple way, without any cinematography. But this is precisely its advantage over other paintings about the Holocaust. After all, the director perfectly coped with the task of showing the war with a child's eyes, and because of this, it looks even more terrible.

9. Reader

• USA, Germany, 2008.
• Drama, melodrama.
• Duration: 124 minutes.
• IMDb: 7, 6.

Young Michael Berg falls in love with the mature but still incredibly beautiful wagon driver Hanna Schmitz. They spend a lot of time together, and Michael enjoys reading aloud to a woman, not knowing the dark meaning of this lesson.

The concentration camp in the film "The Reader" is almost never shown, but this topic is incredibly important for the plot. After this role, many viewers looked at Kate Winslet in a completely different way. Critics, too, were completely delighted with the image of the actress, so that Winslet received the Oscar quite deservedly. But Ralph Fiennes also played great with the young David Cross.

10. Son of Saul

• Hungary, 2015.
• Drama.
• Duration: 107 minutes.
• IMDb: 7, 5.

Hungarian Jew Saul works in a concentration camp as a member of the Sonderkommando. His duties include poisoning his compatriots with gas, destroying their corpses and burning their clothes. One day, among the dead, he finds the boy's body and for some reason decides that this is his long-lost son. Saul wants to bury the child according to all the rules, and for this he needs to find a rabbi in the camp. And on the way to this goal, the hero finds himself involved in a secret conspiracy, the purpose of which is the escape of a group of prisoners.

The powerful film of the Hungarian director Laszlo Nemesh, for whom the picture became the debut, is difficult to recommend to everyone. From the number of shocking moments, most likely, you even want to close your eyes. But you still need to watch such a movie, because it is the best vaccination against oblivion of the horrors of Auschwitz.

11. The zoo keeper's wife

• USA, 2017.
• Drama.
• Duration: 127 minutes.
• IMDb: 7, 0.

The director of the Warsaw Zoo Jan Zhabinsky and his wife Antonina lived happily together until the war broke out. At the very beginning of the occupation of Poland, the Nazis destroy the menagerie along with the animals. Then Antonina comes to mind to open a pig farm not far from the former zoo, under the cover of which she and her husband could save Jews.

This story will seem even more surprising if you know that it is completely true: the Zhabinsky spouses really helped several hundred people. Some facts, however, were changed for the sake of entertainment (for example, in reality, Lutz Heck and Antonina hardly had an affair). But on the other hand, the details of that time are conveyed very accurately, and the acting work of Jessica Chastain deserves the highest praise.

12. Farsi lessons

• Germany, Russia, Belarus, 2020.
• Drama.
• Duration: 128 minutes.
• IMDb: 7, 4.

On his way to a concentration camp, a Belgian Jew, Gilles Cremier, accidentally exchanges his last remaining bread for a very expensive book of Arabic fairy tales. This saves his life: when they are going to shoot him, he pretends to be a Persian. By a happy coincidence, one of Buchenwald's officers, Klaus Koch, is looking for a Farsi teacher. Now, in order to survive, the hero must teach the German a language that he himself does not know.

In part, director Vadim Perelman tells the story of concentration camp survival as an adventurous comedy. And he does it perfectly. The film also owes its success to the acting duo of Argentinean Nauel Perez Biscayart and German Lars Eidinger (his Russian audience may know from the role of Nicholas II in the acclaimed "Matilda").