Das Verschwinden Des Josef Mengele - Engels ondertiteld
Psychological drama by Kirill Serebrennikov (Leto) about German war criminal and camp doctor Josef Mengele. The film focuses on the period after the Second World War, when the ’angel of death’ fled to South America.Infamous for his experiments on deportees during his tenure as medical officer in Auschwitz, Josef Mengele fled to South America at the end of the war, as so many Nazi war criminals did. Mengele remained on the run until his death in Brazil in 1979, without ever having been tried for his crimes.
Based on the award-winning novel by Olivier Guez, Das Verschwinden Des Josef Mengele imagines the postwar life of the much-hated Nazi officer. It follows Mengele’s time spent hiding out in Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil under a series of aliases, growing increasingly paranoid as he kept constant vigilance for Mossad officers hunting him down. When his son, Rolf, finds him again after years spent apart, Mengele is forced to confront the past he can no longer outrun.
Directed by Russian dissident filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov, who relocated to Germany after his country invaded Ukraine, this is a highly stylised film shot almost entirely in black-and-white.