October 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau. Saul Ausländer is a member of the Sonderkommando, a group of Jewish prisoners isolated from the rest of the camp and forced to help the Nazis in exterminating their fellow man. In one of the crematoria where he works, Saul thinks he recognizes the body of his son among the others. When the Sonderkommando makes plans to revolt, he decides to try the impossible: save the child from the flames and bury him in a proper grave.

Picture gallery

Son of Saul is gripping from the start, taking the audience into the depths of hell until the very end. László Nemes’ camera sticks to the fascinating Géza Röhrig, who is in every scene, through ashes, concrete and blood-soaked earth. Oppressive and stifling, it follows this father in perdition, offering an apocalyptic vision of the exterminations camps, in which the horrors are so severe that they can no longer be taken in by the main character, and therefore the camera. Son of Saul is a great film in terms of mise en scène, and Nemes, the former assistant of Béla Tarr, won the Jury Prize winner at Cannes 2015 for his work. This filmic strength keeps the story from finding the necessary atmosphere in which to flourish, but the movie is remarkable nonetheless, all the more since it marks Nemes’ debut.