The film revolves around human rights lawyer Philip Sands, two adult children of Nazi war criminals, Nazi governors and advisers to Adolf Hitler. It is a distinctive path that all of these people lead as they travel across Europe and reveal how they reconcile with their fathers ’brutal actions and try to connect with the strange world.
It entirely upends what I confess were my own preconceptions about what such a film would be: that is, a placid, consensual study, ruefully brooding on the sins of the fathers. This is far more challenging - and more disturbing.
What Our Fathers Did is a movie about historical and filial responsibility, about repudiation, about acceptance, about the pain we inherit, and the pain that continues to be doled out.
What is it like to grow up as the son of a senior Nazi, with atrocities on your family conscience? In this powerful documentary, the British lawyer Philippe Sands meets two men living in the shadow of the Third Reich in very different ways.
"What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy" wields a power that towers above many other small movies. It may not be the large definition of cinematic, but it is still a true film.
What starts out as a genial documentary about two sons of high officials of the Nazi Party soon turns chilling in the gripping and compelling "What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy."
