Redwarmin This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Twilightfa Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Clarissa Mora The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

tsuruJ This is my first review and I am writing it in regards to some of the other reviews. You can read the synopsis in the other reviews; I don't need to post what others have already posted. This is more my random thoughts and questions to ponder. I recently watched another somewhat related documentary called "The Flat" in which the daughter of Nazis is adamant that her parents did not participate. This is not what takes place in this film. Monika, the daughter of the commander of a concentration camp, is well aware of the evil that was in her father. She comes looking for some answers and it is obvious that she will not get them all from Helen, who was basically a slave for Monika's father, Amon Goeth.A couple of things that stick out is that even before the journey, Monika says that she is not going to say sorry nor does she plan to ask for forgiveness. I think that this is important because both women know that there is nothing for her to be sorry about. This is why Helen does not offer any apologies nor does she forgive her. Sometimes, I think that when Americans see things through an American lens, it turns people like Helen and Monika into someone they are not. How is Helen supposed to be gracious and loving toward someone who is the physical embodiment of the person who beat and tortured her? That she met with Monika is pretty amazing and I walk away feeling that Monika knows this. Along these lines, there is the verbal discourse between the women in the actual villa where Goeth lived with Helen. Watching it again, Monika is not making excuses for the Nazis. She is explaining what is told to her. Although I understand that Helen does not want to hear it, it becomes a very awkward situation because what is being said and how it is interpreted are two totally different things. It is not "jaw dropping" because Monika clearly does not believe these lies herself and even says so. Parents often lie to children about things and sometimes when those lies come to light, it is very difficult for the child to instantly know what is true and what is not. Overall, I think this film does a very good job. It is a documentary in the plainest sense. The participants do not seem coached or prodded. However, it is a little like playing with fire. In "Daughter from Da-Nang" similar techniques are used and fall very flat. There seems to be that same risk here but luckily Helen and Monika move past the argument in the villa and are able to leave on good terms. At the end, I had so many questions: Monika's mom does look Jewish, was she a Jew or part Jewish? Schindler was Goeth's friend, so he too must have seen the killings but let the few be sacrificed to save the masses? What of Monika's drug addicted daughter? Helen's other children? Helen's life? What do people living in the villa now know about the camp? I was thinking that I wish it had been a little bit more optimistic but when you are talking about the Holocaust and suicides and hangings, what you get is better than what could be expected. Real life is not wrapped up in a big bow at the end and neither is this film.

hughman55 This documentary is about victims and perpetrators. The victims are Helen, a Holocaust survivor, and Monika the daughter of, Amon Goeth, the camp commandant where Helen was held as a prisoner/slave. Monika never knew her father, Amon Goeth, and she has sought out a meeting with one of his victims for a closure that is not possible. Monika knows about her fathers atrocities from films, documentaries, word of mouth, and from her mother. Helen knows about his atrocities first hand because she lived them. Monika freely admits that she has hated her mother, Goeth's mistress at the concentration camp, since she was eleven. She is adrift in life. Her father was hung for war crimes when she was an infant but her problems in life go so much farther than the memory of, no knowledge (she never even knew him), of a man she never even met. Her mother Ruth was, well, she loved and lived along side a mass murderer. Draw your own conclusions about that. Monika has. Monika has reached out for a meeting with one of her father's surviving victims for some unattainable catharsis. Helen, the survivor of unspeakable cruelty at the hands of Goeth, surprisingly, agrees to meet with her at the site of concentration camp in Poland. The two women's reasons for going to Poland and meet could not be more divergent. If you were in a car and another person were in another car, and the two of you were hit head on by a third car, and the driver of the third car turned out to be your father whom you'd never met, would you turn to the other accident victim and ask for help? That's what essentially happened here. Monika came to Poland to meet Helen and receive forgiveness, absolution, sympathy, something. But there is nothing in this world that exists that Helen can offer her. Despite that, Helen does share with Monika that her mother once said to her, "If I could help you, I would. But I can't". It is generous beyond measure because she is saying this about a woman who lived with a man who shot concentration camp prisoners from the balcony of their villa for fun. Who knows what tone came with that feeble comfort. But Helen understands that although Monika never even met him, she too is one of Goeth's victims. Even after all that she's been through she tries to give Monika some peace in her anguish. Almost as disturbing as seeing Helen recount and relive the atrocities she endured, was reading one of the reviews here that says, "As several viewers have noted, Monika comes across as the more sympathetic of the two women. Helen was severely hurt by her childhood experiences, and has never fully recovered. She still views the world as hostile, even when it is not. Monika is not an enemy. One would have liked to have seen Helen express the forgiveness for which Monika so obviously hungers." First, no one noted that Monika was more sympathetic so that's a strange way to begin an observation. Second, "fully recovered"? Who recovers, fully or otherwise, from surviving being a prisoner in a German concentration camp? Seriously. And forgive Monika for what? There is no connection. Then there are some strange assertions that Helen has not moved on and forgiven. Helen is the one who suffered through the Holocaust. Her husband did too. Her husband survived the Holocaust, but couldn't survive the "surviving" and took his own life at the age of sixty-five. When exactly is one supposed to get over all of that, move on, and "forgive"? What an inexplicable comment to make. Monika is most definitely a victim of the Holocaust. But not in the same way as Helen. It is one thing to be tangentially connected to it, and another to have experienced it's atrocities first hand. Monika, desires, and deserves sympathy. Helen has no ill will whatsoever towards Monika, who is innocent of the crimes of her father. But Monika has to find her own peace. It is not Helen's give her. Astonishingly, at one point when they are going through the villa together; the place where Helen was kept as a prisoner, beaten, pushed down stairs, the place where Helen watched Goeth shoot prisoners from his balcony for fun, the place where she watched his dogs tear prisoners to shreds for amusement, Monika attempts to explain away some of the killing, to Helen, as "disease control". It is jaw dropping to watch. If it wasn't clear before then, the viewer knows at that point that this meeting should never have taken place. There is no resolution to this other than to survive. One of these women is doing that. The other is trying.

Martin Teller An odd coincidence that I watched this after I Am Twenty, another film about people whose fathers were lost in WWII. But Monika Hertwig had a very distinctive father: Amon Goeth, the vicious Nazi concentration camp commandant immortalized in Schindler's List. Monika struggles to cope with the atrocities committed by Goeth, and reaches out to Helen Jonas... a survivor who, as a young girl, was taken into the Goeth villa as a household servant and suffered abuse directly from Goeth's hand. The meeting between these two women provides moments far more shattering and resonant than anything in Spielberg's film, especially when they return to the villa. A very moving story of women trying to find peace with their histories, even better than Moll's previous Holocaust documentary, The Last Days.

raviyn5-2 This is an amazing story of two very powerful and proud women. One who survived the holocaust as a victim, the other brandished a victim by her patronage. The story revolves around two women meeting for the first time, one a survivor of a concentration camp, the other the daughter of the commandant of the camp, amon goeth. It begs the question: are we responsible for our father's mistakes? It's hard to imagine the courage both women would have to convey in order to meet each other but they both do brilliantly. I would definitely recommend a viewing, if for nothing else, for the amazing composure of these women who prove tolerance knows no bounds.