The Counterfeiters

The 2007 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film casts a light on an obscure but fascinating facet of German war history: the Nazi plot to counterfeit British pounds and American dollars to fund their nearly bankrupt war effort. Karl Markovics stars as Salomon "Sally" Sorowitsch, a legendary Jewish forger in 1936 Berlin who is plucked from the general population of the death camps and ultimately put in charge of the secret forging detail. It's his ticket to survival and he takes a personal interest in protecting everyone in the unit, while the young Adolf Burger (August Diehl) is ready to sabotage the process. The framing sequence (featuring Dolores Chaplin, Charlie's granddaughter) is a bit glib but the camp scenes are vividly realized and the central conflict -- self-survival vs. self-sacrifice -- is made clear in terms we can understand. Like Sally, all we know of the war outside the walls comes in the form of rumor and educated guesses from vague information, and the only deaths we experience are those we've come to know in the camp. Stefan Ruzowitzky directs and scripts from the nonfiction book by Burger, a Holocaust survivor and printer who was part of the real-life forgery detail. In German with English subtitles.

Ruzowitzky provides commentary in English and barely takes time for a breath as he fills the track with production details and historical background. He's quick to point out how much comes from the historical record and what is his dramatic fiction. Ruzowitzky is also featured in the 13-minute "Q&A With Stefan Ruzowitzky," taped at his appearance at an AFI screening, and an 18-minute interview shot for the DVD, both in English. Also features "Making the Counterfeiters" (a brief promotional-style featurette in German), interviews with the real-life Burger (in German) and star Markovics (in English), and "Adolf Burger's Artifacts," a 19-minute featurette with Burger describing his personal experience in the camps and illustrating it with examples of the forgeries they printed, from postage stamps to hard currency.