Filip

In 1961, the Polish author Leopold TYRMAND (1920-1985) published the semi-biographical novel "FILIP", which was recently finally translated into German by the Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt. Since Polish cinema has been on the rise for some time, it was only a matter of time before this extraordinary book was made into a film for the cinema.

With the last of his strength, the Polish Jew Filip (Eryk KULM) is able to escape the unbelievable murders in the Warsaw Ghetto. And what does this young man do, struggling to survive? Using false information, he went to Nazi Germany as a forced laborer. There he works as a waitress in a luxury hotel in Frankfurt am Main. What madness! Together with his friend Pierre (Victor MEUTELET), the attractive Filip doesn't let anything go wrong. The young men also offer sexual services for starving German women. On the contrary! Somehow Filip sees his attractive coldness towards the female sex as his personal revenge for the injustice he has suffered. He finds a like-minded person in the beautiful Blanka (EUROVISION star Zoe STRAUB). His dullness is only put to the test when he meets the young German Lisa (Caroline HARTIG). Soon the first bombs will fall on Frankfurt am Main...

This film impresses with its brilliant change of perspective. A Polish Jew puts himself in great danger in order to survive. This means you can finally see Nazi-era Germany from the perspective of people who knew how to use the system to their advantage in order to survive. The film was shot in Torun, Poland, which still bears a lot of resemblance to a city from the 1940s. The film can now find a worldwide audience on NETFLIX. You should definitely watch it in the original, where German, Yiddish and Polish are spoken.

The appearance of the Austrian actress and singer Zoe STRAUB is particularly beautiful. At the EUROVISION Song Contest 2016 in Stockholm, she competed for her home country Austria and achieved an excellent eighth place in the televoting. Zoe STRAUB is now a successful actress.

Very worth seeing film!

The portrait of a surviver. A young Pole man, losting his family, working, grace to help of a friend, in great hotel, hidding his identity , having sex, succes and terrible cynism about life.

Discovering true love and true friendship. And understanding, after lost of best friend, after revenge , than he can survive only being alone.

Beautiful locations, nice story, interesting performances . A testimony , in other manner than ordinary one, about life under totalitarian regime. Not original idea but Eryk kulm has the precious science to offer to his Filip the right traits to be more than another Jew in terrible circumstances. A nice work of Victor Meutelet as Pierre.

A film about what real matters. Not impressive but honest at whole.

Unusual angle for a WW2 story with a specific refugee situation I have never seen evoked in a WW2 movie. The Polish young man at the center of this story is a difficult "hero" to like in spite of his obvious plight, because of his brutally hard shell and the death wish at time that seems to motivate his acts against his survival skills. But his moral evolution can be understood well enough, and the unknowns in his trajectory can be easily imagined. Meanwhile life in the Stuttgart hotel where he works in 1943 as a presumed French waiter is a microcosm of what happens to Germany as despair, decay, food scarcity, army defeats and survival needs vs morality sketch the end in sight for the crumbling nazi empire. I liked how the movie mixed German, Polish, French, Italian and (maybe?) yiddish dialogues seamlessly. Subtitles in my eyes are not a problem but an enhancement to a story like that. It is a story of survival in a foreign land under brutal circumstances: varied languages are a necessary part of the hostile landscape. The actor who plays the main role is perfect in his ability to charm and scare at the same time.

I was totally absorbed watching this movie. It was beautifully produced, very well cast, and kept me guessing. I liked that fact that the moral issues weren't presented as black and white and people on both sides are shown exploiting situations for personal gain or revenge. I've watched dozens of movies about WWII, but none quite like this: none which seemed so real and yet so artistic, so full of surprises and yet so believable, and most of all, one with such a complex central character for whom I felt so much empathy in spite of his moments of cruelty. And I agree with one of the other reviewers that the climax of the movie is tremendous.

I was going to abandon watching it after the propaganda-style beginning, but I'm glad I continued watching, as all the remaining part of the movie was unexpectedly original and devoid of clichés. The naked bodies and the love / sex scenes are beautifully filmed. The main actor does a terrific job, showing a very wide range of feelings, from ironical debonair nonchalance to despair beyond tears. The entire cast is quite good, the cinematography recreates a believable atmosphere of the years in which the German people were beginning to realise they were going to lose the war, in spite of all the methodical atrocities they perpetrated or merely witnessed. Quite an unexpected ending...