Persian Lessons

Name: Persian Lessons
Genre: War, Period Piece, Drama
Released: 2020
Duration: 127 min
Cast: Lars Eidinger, Nahuel Pérez Biscayart, Jonas Nay, David Schütter, Alexander Beyer

Vadim Perelman20202h 7mWar, Period Piece, Drama

Why we chose it

To stay alive, a young Jewish man claims to be Persian, and as luck would have it, an SS officer wants to learn the language. So he invents it word by word and must remember every one, knowing one slip could cost him his life. The film’s Persian was built from the names of real Holocaust victims.

Synopsis

In occupied France in 1942, Gilles is being driven to his execution in a truck with other Jews when, at the last moment, he passes himself off as Persian. That gets him sent to a camp, where Koch, the SS officer who runs the kitchen, demands private Persian lessons. Gilles doesn’t know a word of the language, so he makes one up from scratch over the camp’s cooking pots. Then he is handed the prisoner register to copy out, and it becomes his dictionary.