Persian Lessons
2020 · Movie · 127 min. · Russia
1942. Gilles, a young Belgian man, is arrested by the SS alongside other Jews and sent to a concentration camp in Germany. He narrowly avoids execution by swearing to the guards that he is not Jewish, but Persian. This lie temporarily saves him, but then Gilles is assigned a seemingly untenable mission: to teach Farsi to Koch, the officer in charge of the camp’s kitchen, who dreams of opening a restaurant in Iran once the war is over. Gilles finds himself having to invent a language he doesn’t know, word by word. As the unusual relationship between the two men begins to incite jealousy and suspicion, Gilles becomes acutely aware that one false move could expose his swindle. Filmmaker Vadim Perelman directs this gripping drama with a slick, assured hand. Persian Lessons achieves that rare feat of maintaining a fine balance between a respectful account of the horrors of the Shoah, and a sense of irony that may be one of the keys to surviving such madness.
Direction Vadim Perelman
Cast Nahuel Pérez Biscayart · Lars Eidinger · Leonie Benesch · Jonas Nay · David Schütter · Luisa-Céline Gaffron · Alexander Beyer · Giuseppe Schillaci · Peter Beck · Andreas Hofer · Nico Ehrenteit · Marcus Calvin · Mehdi Rahim-Silvioli · Ingo Hülsmann · Felix von Bredow · Antonin Chalon · Serge Barbagallo · Pascal Elso · Elena Stetsenko · Gennadiy Fomin · Alexander Starchenko · Alexandr Zhdanovich · Anton Zhukov · Svetlana Anikey · Anastasia Gudei · Veronika Buslaeva · Elena Girenok
Soundtrack Evgueni Galperine · Sacha Galperine
Screenplay Ilya Tsofin · Wolfgang Kohlhaase
Cinematography Vladislav Opelyants
Original title Persischstunden (Persian Lessons)
6.6
2K votes (FilmAffinity)
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