The last Holocaust film I saw was the Counterfeiters which is one of my all time favourite films. This French-made film is set in France and tells the story of the round up of French Jews in 1942 by the occupying Germans.
It follows a group of Jewish families living in an enclave in Paris as life gets more tough and restricted in the lead up to and after their incarceration before being transported to Poland.
Aside from the families' stories it also examines the politics of the time as French politician's negotiated the terms of the hand over and the numbers.
Naturally its an emotional piece both from the perspective of those whose lives as are destroyed and the non-Jewish French people who did everything they could to help them and ease their suffering.
And the French nurse who with a handful of others chooses to devote herself to caring for the families - becoming a surrogate mother to two orphaned children - alongside a Jewish doctor (Jean Reno) until the day they depart for the concentration camps.
It doesn't have the same excruciating dilemma at its heart that Counterfeiters had and it isn't without its flaws. The politics that led to the round up feels a little underdeveloped while the scenes with Hitler feel unnecessary. If this is going to be a story about what happened in France then that is where the focus should lie.
Nonetheless it is a heart wrenching story and I left the cinema an emotional wreck.
It's getting 73% from me. On Rotten Tomatoes there isn't a consensus from the critics yet but visitors have given it 68% while on IMDb it has the same score 6.8/10
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