Nominated for seven German Film Awards, Stefan Ruzowitzky’s tense and tightly wound WWII drama is based on a true story about the biggest counterfeiting scheme ever conceived. It was the waning days of the war and in a desperate attempt to undermine the economies of their enemies and stave off defeat, the Nazis hatched a plan to produce massive amounts of counterfeit currency--British sterling, American dollars--and have it circulated in Allied countries. They turned to the forced-labour and concentration camps to find the expertise and manpower to pull it off. A pre-war counterfeiter extraordinaire and defiant bohemian named Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics)--interned earlier in the war for numerous infractions--is given the job.

That he accepts it plays to one of the themes of the film--how does one save one’s own life while remaining true to one’s conscience and ideals in such a dire situation? The Nazis really did partition off a section of Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and then brought in Sorowitsch, expert printers, bank officials and craftsmen to help with the job. Just one example: they produced more than 130 million pounds sterling of funny money. As Sorowitsch, to use the cliché, “goes along to get along,” Ruzowitzky, working from Adolf Burger’s book The Devil’s Workshop, uses Burger’s fellow-forger character (played by August Diehl) as a counterpoint to Sorowitsch--Burger does his best to sabotage what is happening... As we go to press this Austria-Germany co-production has just been designated as Austria’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award.

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