Son of Saul

Directed by: László Nemes

2015 | Hungary | 105 min | R

October 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Saul Ausländer is a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando, the group of Jewish prisoners isolated from the camp and forced to assist the Nazis in the machinery of large-scale extermination. While working in one of the crematoriums, Saul discovers the body of a boy he takes for his son. As the Sonderkommando plans a rebellion, Saul decides to carry out an impossible task: save the child's body from the flames, find a rabbi to recite the mourner’s Kaddish and offer the boy a proper burial.

"Increasingly allegorical but never less than visceral (visceral and thoughtful) ... a film about the aftermath of a miracle and then a series of miracles that, in its brutal tact, compassion, and intelligence, is something of a miracle itself." — J. Hoberman, Tablet

Winner, Best Foreign Language Film at the 2016 Academy Awards