The Forger

This film is more of a finely detailed character sketch, about a cocky kid who becomes a hero almost by accident.

Peren, who wrote and directed “The Forger,” subtly draws out these conflicted characters one by one.

Peren is clever to favor mischief against a backdrop of gloom, but in doing so she draws a frustrating distance between her subject and the audience.

Shortcomings aside, “The Forger” is another little-known Holocaust story showing how people under duress discover the “better angels of their nature” almost by default and do the right thing, even if it means perishing in the process.

The Forger is a beautifully-rendered tale about one man’s dedication to living life in the backdrop of Nazi Germany, focusing on the domestic mundanities which we often take for granted and molds them into necessary personal rituals for survival.

Perhaps that’s the real message of “The Forger.” It almost didn’t matter what you did under the genocidal regime. Surviving was as much a matter of luck and chance as it was possessing any particular skills or taking any deliberate actions.

Peren, also responsible for the script, does not take too many risks when it comes to portraying what his protagonist carried out, and her focus on Cioma's daily life and his best friend never strays from sobriety. [Full review in Spanish]

That the protagonist never worries about the disappearance of his family could perhaps be interpreted as a characteristic of his personality or a central fault of an excessively debatable script... [Full review in Spanish]

Under normal circumstances, the story of Cioma Schönhaus’ brief career in forgery would be a standard crime drama. But Maggie Peren’s film, The Forger, inverts the genre, with much more at stake than someone pulling off a scheme to get rich.

A very clever film [about] a very clever guy.