The Man In The Basement

The Sandbergs are an intact, middle-class French family. Simon is an architect; his wife Hélène works in a doctor's practice. Their teenage daughter is going through puberty. At the traditional Sunday dinner at Simon's Jewish mother's home his older brother David, to whom Judaism means a lot more than it does to Simon, shows up. Simon mistakenly sells the basement of the family-owned Paris apartment to, of all people, a Holocaust denier. There is no defeating the new owner by legal means alone. This sets off a spiral of helplessness, aggression and violence. What begins as a film about the upheavals experienced by a Jewish family increasingly turns into a gripping psychological thriller that challenges commonplace attitudes such as the suppressing of one's own identity as well as philosemitism, latent antisemitism and racism whilst also demonstrating the seductions of conspiracy-thinking.
Text: Jörg Taszman
English: Peter Rickerby

Actress Victoria Eber will be present at all screenings for a film talk after the film.