2020 · drama · war · historical
Persian Lessons
Directed by Vadim Perelman2h 7m2020
Occupied France, 1942. Gilles is arrested by SS soldiers alongside other Jews and sent to a camp in Germany. He narrowly avoids sudden execution by swearing to the guards that he is not Jewish, but Persian. This lie temporarily saves him, but Gilles gets assigned a life-or-death mission: to teach Farsi to Head of Camp Koch, who dreams of opening a restaurant in Iran once the war is over. Through an ingenious trick, Gilles manages to survive by inventing words of "Farsi" every day and teaching them to Koch.
Our read: Persian Lessons (2020) reads as a heavy, kinetic, grounded drama · war · historical entry — extreme in intensity, mid-stakes in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook.
Heavy, kinetic, extreme drama / war, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, mid-stakes, measured.
- heavy
- brisk
- intense
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“You want a Holocaust survival puzzle built on invented language and nerve.”
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