The Reader — Germany
Teenager Michael Berg begins a secret affair with older woman Hanna Schmitz in post-war Heidelberg — years later he encounters her as a defendant at a war crimes trial for her role as an SS guard.
Set against West Germany's reckoning with its Nazi past in the 1960s and 1970s, the film reflects the real Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials (1963-1965), among the first significant German prosecutions of camp personnel. The film explores how ordinary Germans participated in the Holocaust and the difficulty the following generation faced in judging them.