The Counterfeiters

Stefan Ruzowitzky's 2007 drama The Counterfeiters is a fascinating and revealing tour de force about the real counterfeiters who flooded post-war Europe with fake currency.

With the sensitivity of an artist, the director creates intricate scenes in which morality is never black and white.

Karl Markovics hauntingly plays the troubled Jewish counterfeiter Salomon Sorowitsch, drawn into a strange symbiosis with his Nazi captors.

The production values feel relentlessly authentic thanks to filming at the real Sachsenhausen camp.

Cinematographer Benedict Neuenfels films intimate scenes with a tactile verisimilitude.

This is not a polemic, but a nuanced study of how desperation and opportunism blurred the boundaries of World War II. The facts are often stranger than the propaganda, and the truth is complex.

Halfway between a thrilling procedural and a moving human drama, The Counterfeiters peers into the abyss with sensitivity and candour. A major achievement that will educate and challenge for decades to come.

Ruzowitzky's masterful hand ensures that this extraordinary true story receives the cinematic respect it deserves.

A work of immense gravitas that has only grown since then.

Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars and Golden Globes.

It won the award for best foreign film from several American critics' groups.

Grossed over $4 million worldwide on a modest production budget of $6 million.