"The Ninth Day"
2004
Directed by Volker Schlondorff

New German Cinema veteran Volker Schlondorff (The Tin Drum) offers a fascinating fictionalized account of the gap in a Luxembourgian clergyman's diary, written during his internment at Dachau. John Bernard was mysteriously allowed nine days to attend his mother's funeral, and Schlondorff and screenwriters Eberhard Gorner and Andreas Pfluger attempt to piece together what might have happened. Their story puts Bernard (Ulrich Matthes, Downfall) at the center of a Nazi scheme to dissuade the Christian church from resisting their efforts, and the church's subsequent collaboration is one of Schlondorff's main focuses. Exacting in its attention to motivation and detail, this is a stinging rebuke to the cruel absurdities of the Nazi era. German with English subtitles.  93 minutes.