Paradise

Andrei Konchalovsky's film follows three people: Olga, a Russian émigré and member of the Resistance played by Yuliya Vysotskaya; Jules, the French collaborationist policeman who arrests her; and Helmut, the SS officer who encounters her in a camp. All three speak directly to camera, and the film sets these confessions between the scenes without ever clarifying who is speaking to whom, or when. Konchalovsky chose black and white from the start, arguing that showing camps and genocide in colour would look both obscene and false. Its real subject is Helmut. He is drawn as a man who experiences Nazism not as a machinery of murder but as an internally coherent, moral, even noble ideal, and his notion of paradise gives the film its title. It is a decision that refuses to explain evil as monstrosity. The dialogue is in German, Russian and French. Konchalovsky won the Silver Lion for Best Director at Venice in 2016 for it. Who it is for: viewers who value films that narrate genocide from the perpetrator's side and formally severe cinema. Who it is not for: anyone who will struggle with the camp scenes, or who wants a clear moral frame.