What would you do if your parents were Nazis? Based on the second novella of Rachel Seiffert’s The Dark Room, Lore tells the story of a Nazi officer’s children travelling together after the Allied victory. It’s a harrowing journey, of course, given the end of the war. But writer-director Cate Shortland takes that journey even further, as she pushes the children through terrible situations in such stunning naturalistic shots. The contrast makes it seem that while everything has gone right for the world, it’s only inevitable to dish out societal shunning towards them, but Shortland still manages a tightrope balance between empathizing with the kids, while still acknowledging the natural weight of the guilt, the shame of having benefitted, even if not complicit, in one of the world’s worst atrocities ever committed. It’s because of this that Lore is such an intriguing, complex, but necessary movie to watch.
"Lore is a akin to a bourgeois German version of Elem Klimov's 1985 Belarus-set Come and See, and it has some outstanding features. The star turn is the lurking cinematography of Adam Arkapaw."
— Roger Clarke
After being abandoned by their Nazi parents at the end of World War II, five German siblings embark on a harrowing journey across their war-torn country. Led by the eldest, 14 year-old Lore, the children are forced to confront their parents’ actions and the reality of a new world.
Southwest Germany, 1945. As the Allied forces sweep across the nation, and their high-level Nazi Officer parents disappear, eldest daughter Lore Dressler must embark on a journey to bring her four siblings to safety.
This was Saskia Rosendahl’s first role right out the bat, and she knocks it right out the park.
Genuinely sad that certain internet spheres prove the necessity of this film.
"The bleak backdrop is rendered with great beauty-so much so that perhaps the sensory poetics of the visuals linger beyond their darker implications."
— Emma Myers