Son of Saul

Seventy years after the liberation of the Nazi death camps, is there really room for another fiction film about the atrocities of the Second World War? This stunningly original Hungarian drama proves there is. Filmed using shallow focus and an oppressively narrow screen ratio - the literal opposite of Lawrence of Arabia - director Laszlo Nemes's Oscar-winning debut tells a story as simple as its title: Sonderkommando Saul (Géza Röhrig), one of the Jewish inmates forced to work for the Nazis for special privileges, discovers the corpse of a boy he claims is his son in a pile of recently murdered corpses. To give the youth a proper burial, Saul must search the camp for a rabbi who will recite the Kaddish for him. As Saul carries out his mission, talk of a revolt swirls around his ears, but like Saul we only see what is in front of us. The result is an intense, immersive experience that harrowingly but respectfully explores the personal and public horrors of the Holocaust.