The Counterfeiters

80th Academy Awards: Best Foreign Film Winner
The Counterfeiters (Die Fälscher)
2007
Austria
Color
Directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky

Plot: The Counterfeiters is the true story of the largest counterfeiting operation in history, set up by the Nazis in 1936. Salomon "Sally" Sorowitsch 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. 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 Bernhard. The team, which also includes detainee Adolf Burger, 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. (Written by Sony Pictures Classics)

Theme: WWII, Nazi, Crime

Links: imdb | Wikipedia | Official Website (English)

Poster:

Katyń

80th Academy Awards: Best Foreign Film Nominee
Katyń
2007
Poland
Color
Directed by Andrzej Wajda

Plot: On 17 September 1939, a group of Polish officers and soldiers are imprisoned by the Soviet Army on the border of Poland. Anna and her daughter Nika travel from Krakow to meet her husband and officer Andrzej and they try to convince him to leave the soldiers and escape back home. However, Andrzej refuses to leave the troop and is deported to USSR. Later the Soviet tells that the Polish officers had been massacred by the Germans in the Katyn Forest with a shot on the back of the neck. However Anna retrieves Andrzej's diary and discloses that the soldiers had been actually murdered by the Soviet Army. (Written by Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

Theme: WWII, Military

Links: imdb | Wikipedia | Official Website

Poster:

12

80th Academy Awards: Best Foreign Film Nominee
12
2007
Russia
Color
Directed by Nikita Mikhalkov

Plot: A loose remake of 12 Angry Men (1957), set in a Russian school. 12 jurors are struggling to decide the fate of a Chechen teenager who allegedly killed his Russian stepfather. Stepfather took teenager to live with him to Moscow, during Chechnya war, in which teenager lost his parents. The jurors: a racist taxi-driver, a suspicious doctor, a vacillating TV producer, a Holocaust survivor, a flamboyant musician, a cemetery manager, and others represent the fragmented society of modern day Russia. A stray bird (a touch of New Age cinema) is flying above the jurors' heads, alluding to tolerance. (Written by Steve Shelokhonov)

Theme: Courtroom, Crime

Links: imdb | Wikipedia | Official Website

Poster:

Beaufort

80th Academy Awards: Best Foreign Film Nominee
Beaufort (בופור)
2007
Israel
Color
Directed by Joseph Cedar

Plot: BEAUFORT tells the story of LIRAZ LIBERTI, the 22 year-old outpost commander, and his troops in the months before Israel pulled out of Lebanon. This is not a story of war, but of retreat. This is a story with no enemy, only an amorphous entity that drops bombs from the skies while terrified young soldiers must find a way to carry out their mission until their very last minutes on that mountaintop. As LIRAZ lays the explosives which would destroy that very same structure that his friends had died defending, he witnesses the collapse of all he's been taught as an officer, and his soldier's mental and physical disintegration.

Theme: War

Links: imdb | Wikipedia | Official Website

Poster:

Mongol

80th Academy Awards: Best Foreign Film Nominee
Mongol (Монгол)
2007
Kazakhstan
Color
Directed by Sergei Bodrov

Plot: The story recounts the early life of Genghis Khan who was a slave before going on to conquer half the world including Russia in 1206.

Theme: Biography, Warrior

Links: imdb | Wikipedia | Official Website

Poster: