Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suess

6.9 / 10 | 1h 40m | Germany

2009 | Documentary

Though almost forgotten today, Veit Harlan was one of Nazi Germany's most notorious filmmakers. His most perfidious film was the treacherous anti-Semitic propaganda film Jud Süß (1940) - required viewing for all SS members. An unrepentant and blindly obsessive craftsman, no figure - save for Leni Riefenstahl - is as closely associated with the cinema of the Holocaust years. (Harlan's epic Burning Hearts (1945) was the basis for Inglourious Basterds (2009)'s pivotal film-within-a-film Stolz Der Nation.) This documentary is an eye-opening examination of World War II film history as well as the story of a German family from the Third Reich to the present; one that is marked by reckoning, denial and liberation.