80-year-old Ali Ungar comes across a book by a former SS officer describing his wartime activities in Slovakia. He realises his parents were executed by him. He sets out to take revenge but finds instead his 70-year-old son, Georg, a retired teacher. Georg, who had avoided his father all his life, decides to find out more about him and offers Ali to be his interpreter.
Acting
Menzel and Simonischek's prickly chemistry carries the whole damn thing.
Writing
Dialogue that weaponizes translation itself — devastating.
Director
Martin Šulík
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Jiří Menzel was 80 during filming, same age as his character — this was one of his final roles before his death in 2020.
The film confronts Slovakia's own Holocaust complicity, which Soviet-era cinema largely buried. Šulík deliberately shot in German and Slovak to mirror the characters' linguistic fracture.
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