The epic tale of a friendship between a young Swedish boy who thinks his aunt and uncle are his biological parents and the son of a wealthy Jewish bookseller who fled Nazi Germany. Shake a tree come awards season and a Holocaust film is bound to fall out. Director Lisa Ohlin’s Simon of the Oaks has at least two things going for it. Set between 1939 and 1952, the film is magnificent to behold, thanks to the meticulous lenswork of cameraman Dan Laustsen and precise period recreation by production designers Anders Engelbrecht and Lena Selander. It also houses a rare and shockingly unsentimental depiction of a concentration camp victim. The first time we see Iza (Katharina Schüttler) with shoulder length hair, it’s hard to believe she’s the same clean shaven woman we were introduced to a scene earlier as she was being released from Auschwitz. Iza is a survivor who is angry, cynical, and eager to engage in some rough trade with her cousin. I'm normally the first to cry foul at the introduction of an unnecessary romantic subplot, but when Iza exits, the picture goes with her. What remains is a soap opera. With Bill Skarsgård, Karl Linnertorp, Jan Josef Leifers, and Helen Sjöholm. (2012) — Scott Marks
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