Fearlessly confronting yet more of Germany’s horrific 20th Century past, director Max Färberböck’s powerful melodrama stares into a wrenching ordeal that most WW2 movies turn a blind eye to: the mass rape of Berlin women by victorious Russian soldiers.
Based on the diaries of an anonymous rape victim, the film explores morality in chaos via a twisted anti-love story between an ice-blonde Nazi (the fantastic Nina Hoss) and the Red Army officer (Yevgeni Sidikhin) she allies herself with rather than be brutally passed between the troops.
Intense, intelligent and full of rare emotional and political complexities.
