The Counterfeiters (2007 film)

The Counterfeiters
Directed byStefan Ruzowitzky
Written byStefan Ruzowitzky
Based onThe Devil's Workshop: A Memoir of the Nazi Counterfeiting Operation
by Adolf Burger
Produced byJosef Aichholzer
Nina Bohlmann
Babette Schröder
StarringKarl Markovics
August Diehl
Devid Striesow
CinematographyBenedict Neuenfels
Edited byBritta Nahler
Music byMarius Ruhland
Production
companies
Aichholzer Film
Magnolia Filmproduktion
Babelsberg Studio
Distributed byFilmladen (Austria)
Universum Film (Germany)
Release dates
  • 22 March 2007 (2007-03-22) (Germany)
  • 23 March 2007 (2007-03-23) (Austria)
Running time
98 minutes
CountriesAustria
Germany
LanguagesGerman
Russian
English
Hebrew
Budget$6.25 million[1]
Box office$20.2 million[1]

The Counterfeiters (German: Die Fälscher) is a 2007 Austrian-German drama film written and directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky. It fictionalizes Operation Bernhard, a secret plan by Nazi Germany during World War II to destabilize the United Kingdom by flooding its economy with forged Bank of England pound notes. The film centres on a Jewish counterfeiter, Salomon 'Sally' Sorowitsch, who is coerced into assisting the operation at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

The film is based on the 1983 Czech-language memoir Komando padělatelů ("The Commando of Counterfeiters") by Adolf Burger, which was published in English as The Devil's Workshop. Burger was a Jewish Slovak typographer who was imprisoned in 1942 for forging baptismal certificates to save Jews from deportation and was later interned at Sachsenhausen to work on Operation Bernhard.[2] Ruzowitzky consulted closely with Burger through almost every stage of the writing and production. The film won the 2007 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar at the 80th Academy Awards.

  1. ^ a b "Die Fälscher".
  2. ^ "The Counterfeiters Tell Their Tale". Aish.com. 24 May 2008. Retrieved 7 July 2014.