Film Review: The Counterfeiters

Director: Stefan Ruzowitzky

An Austrian made and German language film that follows a group of Jewish counterfeiters who are saved from the concentration camps during the Second World War by the Nazi's to work on 'Operation Bernhard', a plot to flood Britain and America with fake bank notes made by the counterfeiters. The film was a success on its release with the film going onto to win an Oscar for Best Foreign Language film in 2008.

The film specifically follows Salomon Smolianoff (Karl Markovics) who is seen as one of the best criminal counterfeiters in the world when it comes to passports and currency. Although he is caught after unsuccessfully trying to forge American dollars and as a Jew is arrested and sent to a labour camp by the Nazis. As he enjoys a life of luxury compared to the rest of the Jewish prisoners, he is torn between his desire to stay alive by creating the forged currency and his fear that his work may be killing thousands of people in helping the Nazi war effort.


Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics)

The performance of many of the actors but especially Markovics and August Diehl who plays Burger who vehemently opposes creating the fake currency are excellent, they portray the nervousness and desperation of being completely at the mercy of the Nazi officers in charge of the operation. The flaw in the movie is that you quite often find the Holocaust backdrop being downplayed and that the reminders of their situation with deaths of workers and other Jews feel quite forced to make you feel sympathetic to their plight.

The moral question that runs throughout the film on what they are being asked to do and whether they would be killed if they refused is an interesting plot device and manages to maintain the tension throughout the movie. Sorowitsch is well portrayed as a superb counterfeiter but at no points is shown to be a hero, he is very much an average man just wanting to survive in the camp till the end of the war. There have been many films on this subject and The Counterfeiters isn't the best you'll see but is still a good watch.

2.5/4 intriguing Holocaust based plot