DIRECTOR/SCREENPLAY: Robert Schwentke
PRODUCER: Frieder Schlaich
PRODUCTION CO: Filmgalerie 451, Alfama Films, Opus Film
PHOTOGRAPHY: Florian Ballhaus
EDITOR: Michał Czarnecki
MUSIC: Martin Todsharow
WITH: Max Hubacher (Willi Herold), Milan Peschel (Reinhard Freytag), Frederick Lau (Kipinski), Bernd Hölscher (Karl Schütte), Waldemar Kobus (Hansen), Alexander Fehling (Junker), Samuel Finzi (Roger) 

​FESTIVALS: Toronto

REVIEWS

“This German war drama, set mostly in a POW camp for army deserters in the dying embers of World War Two, mixes a truly hellish vision of defeated Nazis with bitumen-black comedy. It’s a hypnotic, upsetting and often quite brilliant allegory of the corrosive nature of power in which a simple uniform transforms a deserting private into a mass-murdering monster.

The soldier, Willi Herold (Max Hubacher) is first encountered on the run from fellow Nazi soldiers, in a casually cruel chase that sets the tone for the film. With the war lost, lives have ceased to matter. Herold escapes by the skin of his teeth and stumbles upon an abandoned staff car containing a Luftwaffe captain’s uniform, which he tries on for size. When a fellow deserter mistakes him for an officer and falls in behind him, it begins to dawn on him that he needs to play the part – a brutal role he soon adopts with alacrity. He and a small band of henchmen wash up at an internment camp, where he claims to be on a secret mission from the Führer. From there, the real horror begins.

This is all based on a true story – you’ll want to forget this in its darker moments – albeit told in a heightened style that contrasts with the stark black-and-white cinematography (imagine Swedish absurdist Roy Andersson at his most nihilistic)… The Captain works as satire on Nazism’s fixation with regulation, paperwork and legal detail as a means of giving itself a veneer of legitimacy. But it also latches on to something even more troubling about the members of this fanatical death cult: when they ran out of people to kill, they started killing each other.”

— Phil de Semlyen, Time Out

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS*

Queenstown
​Tuesday, 01 August, 8.15pm

Canterbury
Monday, 14 August, 7.00pm

Nelson
Tuesday, 22 August, 6.00pm

Whanganui     
Monday, 04 September, 7.00pm

Wellington
Monday, 11 September, 6.15pm

Hamilton     
Monday, 18 September, 6.30pm

Carterton     
Friday, 29 September, 7.00pm 

Palmerston North
Wednesday,11 October, 6.00pm

​*Non-members welcome by donation (notes only please)​
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German Cinema selection presented in
co-operation with the Goethe-Institut