Oct. 22--In an Auschwitz crematorium, a Hungarian prisoner (Geza Rohrig) labors with a Sonderkommando unit, aiding the Nazis' extermination of his fellow Jews. This man, Saul, has but one mission in life, one that may be his lifeline (however temporary) to moral sanity in the worst place on Earth. On the brink of a prisoner revolt (based on a real-life 1944 incident), he strategizes ways to give the body of a young boy, referenced by the title, a proper burial. Director Laszlo Nemes' fierce and very fine debut honors the shattering circumstances of its protagonist by keeping the camera very close to Saul's perspective, every second. Some find the film's methods morally specious and even galling; others experience "Son of Saul" as one of the few examples of Holocaust-themed drama that neither avoids nor exploits the horrors of the death camps, and of one prisoner's way out of hell.
6 p.m. Thursday, AMC River East 21, 322 E. Illinois St. Tickets $11-$14 at chicagofilmfestival.com. Running time: 1:47. In German, Hungarian and Yiddish with English subtitles.
-Michael Phillips
