Der Nachtportier

5.30 pm Introduction with Klaus Davidowicz

The story of an obsessive and sadomasochistic relationship between Lucia, a former concentration camp inmate, and Maximilian, an ex-SS officer who works as a night porter in a Viennese hotel, sparked fierce controversy with its depiction of sexual violence and abuse of power within the context of the Holocaust. Trauma, power, guilt and forgiveness are nevertheless at the centre of this dark psychodrama. Not a traditional Shoah film, but Nazi plagiarism about violence and sexuality, provocative and morally ambivalent. (Klaus Davidowicz)