The Assault

January 1945, Haarlem. Anton is twelve, living with his parents and older brother in a house by the canal. One evening the resistance shoots a collaborating Dutch police chief in the street. The body falls in front of the house next door. The neighbours drag it round to the Steenwijks' door. The Germans arrive; they burn the house and kill the rest of the family. Anton is left alone. The film covers the thirty-five years that follow. Anton grows up, becomes a doctor, marries, has children, and never talks about that night. The night does not let go of him. Roughly once a decade he runs by chance into someone who was inside it: the neighbour who moved the body, the resistance fighter, the son of the German officer. Each encounter changes the story he thought he knew. Fons Rademakers directs, adapting Harry Mulisch's novel. Two hours and twenty-four minutes. It won the Oscar for best foreign language film in 1987.