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Hong Kong

The Commandant's Shadow
1945/2025: 80 Years of Accountability and Continuity

© Warner Bros. Pictures

United States, UK / 2024 / 103’
In English, German with Chinese and English subtitles 
Documentary

Director: Daniela Völker

THE COMMANDANT’S SHADOW follows Hans Jürgen Höss, 87, confronting his father Rudolf Höss’s dark legacy as Auschwitz’s commandant, fictionalized in The Zone of Interest. In a historic London encounter, Hans meets survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, whose day-to-day struggle for survival eight decades ago unfolded in jarring dissonance to Höss’ happy childhood just on the other side of the barbed wire. Accompanied by their children in a historic encounter in Anita’s living room, the two recount their parallel stories with painful honesty, raising timeless and pertinent questions about guilt and forgiveness across generations.

Daniela Völker

Director

Daniela Völker is a London-based EMMY and GRIERSON-nominated Producer and Director with Argentine, German and British citizenship. She has made documentaries for Netflix, CNN, PBS, BBC, ITV, Channel 4, National Geographic, ZDF, France Televisions, on topics as diverse as the current war in Ukraine, the Sicilian mafia and the aftermath of Rwandan genocide. Her recent feature documentary 'The Commandant's Shadow', about the long shadow traumatic events in the past cast down the generations, was acquired by Warner Brothers and HBO and had wide theatrical distribution. 

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