US Edition‘The Disappearance of Josef Mengele’ Review: A Post-War Study of the Nazis’ ‘Angel of Death’ Lacks Dimension
- The film The Disappearance of Josef Mengele, directed by Kirill Serebrennikov and starring August Diehl, premiered in the Cannes Première section on 2023, exploring Mengele's life in hiding after World War II across South America.
- The film is based on Olivier Guez's 2017 fictional biography and follows Mengele's efforts to evade capture over several decades, spanning the 1950s through the 1970s, with the assistance of Nazi collaborators and his wealthy German relatives.
- The film intersperses rare color archival Nazi footage illustrating Mengele's brutal past, while showing his later years involving farming, scheming, and uneasy family encounters, all within a 135-minute runtime.
- Critics note Diehl’s performance borders on caricature and the film struggles to fully depict Mengele’s depravity, maintaining that fascism persists because some allow evil to continue unchecked.
- The Disappearance of Josef Mengele implies that postwar fascist networks enabled war criminals’ survival, but offers limited justification for immortalizing Mengele’s life, leaving viewers questioning the film’s purpose.
11 Articles
11 Articles
In its ambitions, Kirill Serebrennikov's biopic on the fate repeatedly imagined of the Nazi loses us in its formalism and its indecency.
Adapted from the book “The Disappearance of Josef Mengele”, by French Olivier Guez, the drama directed by Russian Kirill Serebrennikov, focuses on the years of anonymity in South America
‘The Disappearance of Jose Mengele’ Review: An Artfully Directed, Intellectually Vacuous Holocaust-Ploitation Flick
The new feature from Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov ('Leto') follows the infamous Nazi doctor during the decades he spent evading capture in South America.
‘The Disappearance of Josef Mengele’ Review: A Post-War Study of the Nazis’ ‘Angel of Death’ Lacks Dimension
With “The Disappearance of Josef Mengele,” Russian dissident Kirill Serebrennikov trains his lens once more on the fault-lines of democracy, and the ease with which fascism takes hold and cross-pollinates. However, the black-and-white-shot post-World War II biopic contains more ideas than it can handle, between a central character study — led by an impeccable August Diehl — mixed with a globe-trotting tale of evasion, along with numerous hints t…
Laszlo Nussbaum recalls the time in a labour camp in Eichsfeld. As a prisoner who escaped the selection three times by Josef Mengele, he emphasizes the humanity of a man.
The Disappearance of Josef Mengele – first-look review
Kirill Serebrennikov had a film in competition for the Palme d’Or at three of the first four Cannes Film Festivals post-COVID, a period immediately following his unjust conviction, in his native Russia, on trumped-up charges of embezzlement from the state-funded theatre of which he was president — widely understood to be politically motivated persecution of a dissident artist. Then came Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Serebrennikov’s self-impos…
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