The Counterfeiters (2007 film)
| The Counterfeiters | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Stefan Ruzowitzky |
| Written by | Stefan Ruzowitzky |
| Based on | The Devil's Workshop: A Memoir of the Nazi Counterfeiting Operation by Adolf Burger |
| Produced by | Josef Aichholzer Nina Bohlmann Babette Schröder |
| Starring | Karl Markovics August Diehl Devid Striesow |
| Cinematography | Benedict Neuenfels |
| Edited by | Britta Nahler |
| Music by | Marius Ruhland |
Production companies | |
| Distributed by | Filmladen (Austria) Universum Film (Germany) |
Release dates |
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Running time | 98 minutes |
| Countries | Austria Germany |
| Languages | German Russian English Hebrew |
| Budget | $6.25 million |
| Box office | $20.2 million |
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. 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.