The Counterfeiters (2008)

Academy Award Winner for Best Foreign Language Film

Friday, May 9 - Thursday, May 15

Director: Stefan Ruzowitzky, Adolf Burger
Starring: Karl Markovics, August Diehl
Rating: R * 1 hour 38 minutes * Drama

The true story of Salomon Sorowitsch, counterfeiter extraordinaire and bohemian who was in captured by the Nazis in 1944. He agrees to help the Nazis in an organized counterfeiting operation set up to finance the war effort. It was the biggest counterfeit-money scam of all time. At the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, two barracks were separated from the rest of the camp and the outside world, and transformed into a fully equipped counterfeiters workshop. "Operation Bernhard" was born. Prisoners were brought to Sachsenhausen from other camps to implement the plan, and professional printers, fastidious bank officials, and simple craftsmen all became members of the top-secret counterfeiter crew. They had a choice: If they cooperated with the enemy, they had a chance to survive as first-class prisoners in a "golden cage" with enough to eat and a bed to sleep in. If they sabotaged the operation, a sure death awaited them. For the counterfeiters, it was not only a question of saving their own lives, but also about saving their conscience as well.

"Quiet, watchful, out for himself, Sorowitsch is a complicated figure - neither hero nor villain, and certainly no fool. The Austrian actor Markovics is riveting in the role; he is wiry, anticipatory, his eyes darting with intelligence and worry."-PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

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