Lore (M)

Australian director Cate Shortland`s superb film brings an acutely fresh eye to a quintessential European story. Adapted from British writer Rachel Seiffert`s collection of post-WWII tales, `The Dark Room`, `Lore` takes us into the immediate aftermath of defeat for the children of a high-flying Nazi SS couple. Before their mother is arrested, `Lore` urges her four younger siblings to elude Allied custody and to find refuge with their grandmother in Hamburg. Equipped with survivalist stoicism and a handful of other, less helpful Nazi idealistic, teenagers, `Lore` (mesmerising Saskia Rosendahl), takes charge of her siblings and sets out into the dark woods on the 900km journey. `Lore` sets off on a perilous journey across a vanquished nation, confronting death, deprivation and, inconveniently enough, the tumult of youthful desire… `Lore’s`` doubts and fears about their allegiances, play out in her ambivalent relationship with the watchful, young, Jewish refugee (Kai Malina), she and her siblings connect with along the road. It`s a strange sort of coming-of-age,undertaken during one of history`s darkest periods by a girl with a dawning understanding of events who`s still too young to be guilty.` - Mark Adams, Hollywood Reporter