It is 1943 Europe and any foreigner engaging romantically with a German woman is viewed as causing harm to racial purity – a sacrilege that is punishable by death. It is in a vitiated environment like this that Filip, a young Polish Jew who has escaped from the Warsaw ghetto works as a waiter at a high-end hotel in Frankfurt where he has carnal encounters with German women, knowing the danger fully well – but he doesn’t seem to be bothered as long as he can keep his identity secret. But the situations around him are rapidly changing; his friends are being picked up by the Nazis for inconsequential violations and killed. How long can he hide behind his false, charming exterior before the forces close in on him?
Check out the trailer here:
Michał Kwieciński’s FILIP (Poland, 2023) is a sumptuously mounted war drama that seethes with tension and offers up a wide array of interesting characters and situations.
Streaming on Netflix.
Ranjan Das is a Mumbai based filmmaker & faculty.
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