Today we get the poster one sheet and trailers (you'll find below) for Stefan Ruzowitzky's The Counterfeiters. As part of the Best Foreign Pictures long list picked by Austria, Sony Pictures Classics releases this as part of its 2008 arsenal in February.
Though I had some issues with the picture and thought it was too self-contained, the WWII tale might be worth investigating because it is not overly dramatic and offers a concentration camp experience that is a whole lot different from what we'd expect.
The pic played at the Telluride Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival and tells the true story of Salomon Sorowitsch, counterfeiter extraordinaire and bohemian. After getting arrested in a German concentration camp in 1944, he agrees to help the Nazis in an organized counterfeit operation set up to help finance the war effort.
It was the biggest counterfeit money scam of all times. Over 130 million pound sterling were printed, under conditions that couldn't have been more tragic or spectacular. During the last years of the war, as the German Reich saw that the end was near, the authorities decided to produce their own banknotes in the currencies of their major war enemies. They hoped to use the duds to flood the enemy economy and fill the empty war coffers. At the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, two barracks were separated from the rest of the camp and the outside world, and transformed into a fully equipped counterfeiters workshop. “Operation Bernhard” was born. Prisoners were brought to Sachsenhausen from other camps to implement the plan: professional printers, fastidious bank officials and simple craftsmen all became members of the top-secret counterfeiter commando. They had the choice: if they cooperated with the enemy, they had a chance to survive, as first-class prisoners in a “golden cage” with e
nough to eat and a bed to sleep in. If they sabotaged the operation, a sure death awaited them. For THE COUNTERFEITERS, it was not only a question of saving their own lives, but also about saving their conscience as well…
QUICKTIME
www.sonyclassics.com/syndication/trailers/thecounterfeiters/TheCounterfeiters_Trlr_300.mov
www.sonyclassics.com/syndication/trailers/thecounterfeiters/TheCounterfeiters_Trlr_56.mov
WINDOWS MEDIA
www.sonyclassics.com/syndication/trailers/thecounterfeiters/thecounterfeiters_high.asx
www.sonyclassics.com/syndication/trailers/thecounterfeiters/thecounterfeiters_low.asx
REAL PLAYER
www.sonyclassics.com/syndication/trailers/thecounterfeiters/thecounterfeiters_high.ram
www.sonyclassics.com/syndication/trailers/thecounterfeiters/thecounterfeiters_low.ram
