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Superbly designed and incisively acted, Stefan Ruzowitzky’s taut drama confirms that German-language cinema is currently on a major roll. The setting’s Berlin, 1936: tempted by a beautiful woman, Jewish master-forger Salomon Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics) lingers one night too many and gets himself arrested. Seven years later, he’s still surviving when the Third Reich draft him into a counterfeiting team in Sachsenhausen camp, forging millions of pounds and dollars to undermine the UK and US economies. So long as he does his job, they’re well-housed – yet trapped in the moral hell of helping the Nazi war effort… Based on a true story, The Counterfeiters is anchored in Markovics’ central turn as a chilly egotist forced, for the first time, to consider others’ needs.
