Europa Europa

Europa Europa (1990) is a German-French war drama directed by Agnieszka Holland — watch it online on iFILM. Marco Hofschneider plays Solomon Perel, a young Jewish man whose account of surviving the Second World War became the basis for the film. The story is not invented; Perel was alive when it was made.

After the fall of Poland, Solomon passes himself off as an ethnic German, ending up first among Soviet orphans, then in Wehrmacht uniform, then inside a Hitler Youth academy — each time keeping his identity buried one layer deeper. Holland follows this sequence without melodrama. The horror is structural: a person becomes whatever the regime around him needs, and survival depends on no one looking too closely.

The German Film Academy declined to submit it for the Academy Awards, which tells you something about the discomfort the film produces. The Hollywood Foreign Press gave Holland the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. Stream Europa Europa (1990) online on iFILM.