Son of Saul

A Hungarian Jewish prisoner forced to work in the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz-Birkenau becomes fixated on finding a rabbi to properly bury a boy he believes to be his son. His singular quest unfolds amid the camp's horrific machinery of mass murder and a brewing prisoner uprising.

Sonderkommando units were prisoners forced to assist in the disposal of gas chamber victims at extermination camps; in October 1944, Auschwitz Sonderkommando members staged a desperate armed revolt, destroying a crematorium before being suppressed. The film is shot in tight, immersive close-up to convey the prisoner's fragmented perception of the camp.

The specific father-son narrative is fictional, but it is grounded closely in documented Sonderkommando conditions and the 1944 revolt.

Directed by László Nemes

Cast: Géza Röhrig, Levente Molnár, Urs Rechn

Positioned at October 1944 within the Holocaust extermination camps phase of the war, as part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Sonderkommando uprising. This is entry 126 of 150 in the chronological archive.

• Auschwitz
• Sonderkommando
• Holocaust
• Hungarian cinema
• immersive

• 

  The Zone of Interest

  1943–1944

• 

  The Pianist

  1939–1945

• 

  Schindler's List

  1939–1945

• 

  Uprising

  19 April – 16 May 1943

• 

  Escape from Sobibor

  14 October 1943

• 

  Valkyrie

  20–21 July 1944