Preview: Son of Saul
classified 15 SPlease note: This was screened in April 2016
Winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar and Golden Globe (as well as the Grand Prix at Cannes), this blistering debut from Hungarian director László Nemes is an unforgettable Holocaust drama set inside Auschwitz. We screen it at this special preview screening from 35mm film.
Saul (Géza Röhrig in an astonishingly brave performance) is a member of the Sonderkommando, the Jewish prisoners forced to assist in the grisly day-to-day management of the Nazi extermination camps. When he recognises the body of a boy he becomes determined to save him from the flames and give him a proper burial. However, his search for a Rabbi places both his own life and the escape plan hatched by his fellow inmates in jeopardy...
A completely uncompromising film that spares none of the Holocaust's horror, this is a remarkable, important film that forces us to take a hard look at one of humanity's darkest moments. Visceral, gripping and immensely powerful, it is one of the boldest debuts in recent memory - and is already being heralded as a masterpiece of world cinema.
Also screening with László Nemes' first film, 14-minute short With A Little Patience. Told in a single take, and offering no escape from the face of a young woman going about her daily office duities, it builds to a slow, explosive climax...
Son of Saul then opens from Fri 29 April for at least one week.
- In this month's podcast Watershed's Cinema Curator Mark Cosgrove discusses the film and the morality of the creative choices inherent in making films that portray human atrocities.