The Counterfeiters
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The Counterfeiters

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The Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film, a concentration camp drama. Actor Karl Markovics is indelible as the master forger at the centre of its based-on-fact account of a group of prisoners put to work by the Nazis to fake Allied currency. Hard-ass, artist, con man and bon vivant, he’s a severe pragmatist and a born survivor. He finds himself pitted against an idealist amongst the prisoners who is intent on undermining the Nazi operation, though doing so will seriously imperil the lives of his fellow forgers. More

There’s a pragmatist on the Nazi side too – the commandant who despises fascist ideology and respects the survival instincts of his star prisoner, but is equally determined to stay on the winning side. The three-way clash of wills becomes a matter of life and death. 

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2007Rating: R13, violence, content may disturb98 minsGermany, AustriaGerman and Russian, with English subtitles
DramaWar
Director:
Stefan Ruzowitzky ('All the Queen's Men', 'Anatomy')
Writer:
Stefan Ruzowitzky
Cast:
Karl MarkovicsAugust DiehlDevid StriesowDolores ChaplinAugust ZirnerMarie Bäumer

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The Counterfeiters | Awards

Award Winner
Best Foreign Language Film, Academy Awards 2008

The Counterfeiters | Reviews

93%128 reviews

Rotten Tomatoes® Score

All reviews on Rotten Tomatoes
Flicks, Andreas Heinemann

Flicks, Andreas Heinemann

Normally, I don't dig the Oscar bait holocaust movies, because they're fundamentally flawed on a couple of levels. The underlying message that the holocaust was abhorrent is obvious, while visual attempts to depict the horrors can't help but be weak, watered down approximations of what really happened. The Counterfeiters however is a different beast from the cinematic lineage that precedes it. Although it is the true story of a Jewish prisoner in a World War Two concentration camp, it is an original and engaging story.

Full review
Village Voice

Village Voice

At its best--and queasiest--The Counterfeiters asks disturbing questions more commonly found in the survivor literature of Primo Levi or Bruno Bettelheim than at the movies.

Full review
Variety

Variety

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.

Full review
The New York Times

The New York Times

The Counterfeiters is a swift and suspenseful thriller, and perhaps a little too entertaining for its own good.

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San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco Chronicle

Well made, provocative and compelling.

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New Zealand Herald

New Zealand Herald

Bleak and brilliant concentration-camp drama is also a potent moral fable.

Full review
Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Counterfeiters demonstrates that no matter how many Holocaust stories the movies tell, there are always new and unexpected ones waiting to be revealed.

Full review
BBC

BBC

That Ruzowitzky's film is so gripping is partly due to his decision to create a tense thriller rather than get bogged down in grim drama. Yet the director highlights the horrors of war with remarkable subtlety; although the workers are sheltered from seeing the brutality and torture, the screams alone are terrifying.

Full review

The Counterfeiters | Release Details

The Counterfeiters is available to stream in New Zealand now on Academy On Demand.

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