Film· 2008· Drama

The Reader

by Stephen Daldry

The Reader: it draws on 2 recorded sources.

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Real-world influenceHIGH
  • The Holocaust

Hanna Schmitz is tried for her part as an SS guard in the Holocaust, at a trial modelled on the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials.

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About the work

The Reader

The film tells the story of Michael Berg, a Berlin lawyer who, as a 15-year-old in 1958, has a brief summer love affair with an older woman, Hanna Schmitz. She abruptly leaves, only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a guard at a Nazi concentration camp. Michael realizes that Hanna is keeping a personal secret she believes is worse than her Nazi past — a secret which, if revealed, could help her at the trial.

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