John Rabe

John Rabe (2009) is Florian Gallenberger's historical war drama, and you can watch online on iFILM. Ulrich Tukur plays a real figure: a Siemens representative stationed in China who found himself at the center of one of the twentieth century's bleakest chapters.

Late autumn, 1937. The Japanese army closes in on what was then China's capital, and most foreigners scramble to get out. Rabe stays. Together with an American doctor (Steve Buscemi) and a small group of Europeans, he fences off a few city blocks and declares them a safety zone — a scrap of ground where refugees pour in by the thousand. Over the following weeks that makeshift sanctuary shelters well over two hundred thousand people. Daniel Brühl, Zhang Jingchu and Teruyuki Kagawa round out the cast.

The strange catch is that this rescuer carried a Nazi party card and at first trusted that the swastika on his flag would keep people safe from Germany's ally. Gallenberger refuses to sculpt him into a flawless saint, showing instead a tired, second-guessing man who simply couldn't walk away. The film was named Best Film at the German Film Awards. Heavy going but worth it for anyone drawn to stories of private choice against the scale of catastrophe. Stream John Rabe (2009) online on iFILM.