The Counterfeiters

There are shades of Life is Beautiful in this outstanding German drama that might find itself pushing for foreign language success at the next Oscars. Jewish forger Sally (Markovics), Europe's greatest counterfeiter, is arrested before the war and sent to a concentration camp once it starts. There his skills are enlisted to help with the Nazi plan to flood Britain and the US with millions of forged bank notes to destabilise the economy, and he must reconcile himself to the fact that survival entails collaboration, something that not everyone around him is comfortable with. Though many of the usual elements of holocaust dramas are there, The Counterfeiters presents enough new ideas and characters to make it well worth your time, not to mention tense action, riveting conflict and, at its heart, a complex moral conundrum that shapes the entire film. [Paul Greenwood]