Product Description

The Counterfeiters is the true story of the largest counterfeiting operation in history, set up by the Nazis in 1936. Salomon "Sally" Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics) is the king of counterfeiters. He lives a mischievous life of cards, booze, and women in Berlin during the Nazi-era. Suddenly his luck runs dry when arrested by Superintendent Friedrich Herzog (Devid Striesow). Immediately thrown into the Mauthausen concentration camp, Salomon exhibits exceptional skills there and is soon transferred to the upgraded camp of Sachsenhausen. Upon his arrival, he once again comes face to face with Herzog, who is there on a secret mission. Hand-picked for his unique skill, Salomon and a group of professionals are forced to produce fake foreign currency under the program Operation Berhard. The team, which also includes detainee Adolf Burger (August Diehl), is given luxury barracks for their assistance. But while Salomon attempts to weaken the economy of Germany's allied opponents, Adolf refuses to use his skills for Nazi profit and would like to do something to stop Operation Bernhard's aid to the war effort. Faced with a moral dilemma, Salomon must decide whether his actions, which could prolong the war and risk the lives of fellow prisoners, are ultimately the right ones.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5796 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-03-17
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 95 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Not for nothing did Stefan Ruzowitzky’s powerful film The Counterfeiters walk away with the Best Foreign Picture Oscar at the 2008 Academy Awards. And like the previous year’s winner of the prize--the equally superb The Lives Of Others--there are some tough decisions for certain German citizens at the heart of it.

The Counterfeiters, though, is set in West Germany in 1936. It tells the true story of history’s biggest ever counterfeiting operation, set up by the Nazis. The mission? To forge foreign currency. And the king of counterfeiters proves to be Salomon Soroswitch, also known as Sally, who ultimately has to face the dilemma of what to do when he realises that his work is helping to fuel war.

There are so many reasons to commend The Counterfeiters that it’s tricky to know where to start. The cast, for instance, is uniformly excellent, and you could rightly wonder why Oscar overlooked both August Diehl and Karl Markovics for nominations. What’s more, it’s also stunningly, and very intelligently, directed, ratcheting up at times the kind of tension that hundreds of films try and fail to match every year. Married up to a script of three dimensional characters and historical reverence, it’s a quite brilliant package, and one that stays with you long after the credits have rolled.

The Counterfeiters is a very different film to The Lives Of Others, but both expertly reflect the dilemmas that individuals had to face in different parts of Germany, albeit some four or five decades apart. Both are exceptional pieces of cinema, though, and for the purposes of this particular review, The Counterfeiters deserves its Oscar, deserves its worldwide praise, and deserves to be part of your DVD collection. Don’t miss it. --Jon Foster

Synopsis
Set in a Nazi concentration camp, this drama centres on history's biggest counterfeit operation. In THE COUNTERFEITERS, prisoners must choose between aiding the Third Reich in their money-making scheme and their own well-being.

Customer Reviews

Captivating Drama
"The Counterfeiters" is an excellent German language film set in Sachsenhausen concentration camp in the latter stages of World War Two. Karl Markovics plays a Jewish counterfeiter who ,together with other Jews from a printing background, are forced by the Nazis to forge English pound notes and dollar bills to help finance the Nazi's increasingly desperate war efforts. The strengths of this Oscar winning film are it's realistic characterisation and superb acting especially that of the mercurial Markovics.The brutality and inhumanity of the Nazis treatment of the Jews is vividly conveyed as is the survivalism of the Jewish prisoners. Definitely one of the best foreign language films that I have seen for some time.As good as "The Lives of Others".

counterfeiters
The counterfeiters is a truly mesmerizing movie with an utterly compelling performance from Karl Markovics who plays the main character 'Sally' an artist turned counterfeiter par excellance.

When he is arrested by the Berlin police Sally finds himself in a concentration camp to survive he must adapt to his surroundings and he uses his artistic skills as a means of survival by painting portraits of the prison guards. Soon he is moved onto another camp and finds himself face to face with the man who put him in the concentration camp only now he wants Sally to work on a project to counterfeit the British pound in an attempt to flood the British currency market and ruin the economy.

The washed out colours and grainy film add to the archive feel of the film utterly compelling.

Excellent Film, Gripping and Thought Provoking
I thought this was a really gripping film and one that raised more complex ethical questions than is usual in this context.
The story centres on two central characters who are part of a group of prisoners in a concentration camp chosen by the Nazis to carry out a counterfeiting operation which could go far to aiding the Nazi war effort.
Burger is an idealistic communist, willing to sabotage the operation and sacrifice his life for his principles, unfortunately this would also mean sacrificing the lives of the others in the group. 'Solly' on the other hand is a criminal, a master counterfeiter whose pragmatism has ensured his survival throughout the war and before. He walks a tightrope between self preservation and honour towards his fellow inmates. He does not have the black and white outlook of Burger and sees partial coersion with the Nazis as the best way to preserve his life and the lives of the other prisoners in his group. He is a complex and interesting character suberbly played by Markovics. In fact all the acting in this film is excellent. Overall the film manages to operate both as a tense, involving drama and one that raises an interesting debate about what would be 'the right thing to do' in such harrowing circumstances. Highly recommended.