A teenage German Jew manoeuvres his way through German and Russian enemy territory, by alternatively passing himself off as an ethnic German, or Jew, depending on which side of the trench he on.

The story of Salomon Perel has the adventure, episode, and incredible turn of fate of a good story. It focuses on the precarious situation of a young Jew, whose instincts for survival force him to conceal his religious identity behind the acquired affectations of the enemy. Marco Hofschneider, as the boy Perel, draws a convincing character trapped in the thick of Nazi Germans, trained to identify and assassinate the enemy, namely, his own community. The film won a Golden Globe award in ?92.

Polish farmer Leon Wolny provides refuge to Rosa, who is on the verge of collapse from fleeing the Nazis. He nurses her back to health, and they both embark on a relationship which is doomed to fail.

Drawing directly from the forces that characterised German Expressionism, by way of Wolny and Rosa's relationship, it makes one aware of the sense of displacement and social collapse at the time. Wolny, who is torn between his religious duties and his physical desires, serves as a symbol of repressed sexuality typical of war time. Set against the backdrop of World War II, the films brings out beautifully the emotional, mental and spiritual mutilation it triggered off.

Charlotte Salomon is a quiet, but passionate artist whose story is told from the south of France, where she discover and recall in art, her inherited melancholy and disappointed love. Her story ends in 1943 when she is abducted and taken to Auschwitz.

It's an intimate biopic of the young life of a woman who uses art as a means of catharsis. Recording the life of an artist, the film itself is artistically constructed, with evocative use of light that often contradicts the gravity of its subject. It follows a fragmented narrative and frequent flashbacks that mirror the chaos in the Charlotte's own mind, but without getting so subjective that it loses the viewer. Engrossing, with beautiful dialogue, and thorough performances.

Lea Weiss is asked to testify against former extermination camp Doctor Berger so that the latter can be prosecuted. However, she finds herself unable to comply, until the pressure to relent forces her to suicide.

It takes us back to the scenes of atrocities committed in concentration camps by using a series of dream sequences as one of its devices. But it also relies on the directness of description. The film highlights the apathy of the post-war world and the lingering fear and trauma that its victims lived with. Facts rendered in a reportorial manner make the film appear harsh and cause us to ponder if the war really ended with the Nazis' fall, or the permanent defeat of those at its receiving end.

An Austrian casualty from WW I becomes aware of his gift for telepathy and prophecy. He moves to Berlin, and as the accuracy of his predictions are proved, his fame grows, until eventually, he is persecuted by the rising Nazi powers when he predicts the burning of the Reichstag.

Although Hanussen, the film, outlines the career of the man, it remains simply that, an outline, and not a concerted study of Hanussen's skill, or inner life. Instead, the film chooses to be a commentary of the social and political scenario in post-WWI Europe. The film also likens Hanussen, the hypnotist, with Hitler, the manipulator of mass will, (with references to a common birthday, nationality, and Leni Riefenstahl, famous for photographing the fuehrer). But for all its mysticism and metaphor, the film would have been more engrossing had it been better edited.

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