Final Account
Former SS members and civilians reckon with their roles in Hitler's Third Reich in a shocking and enlightening film.
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Final Account is an urgent portrait of the last living generation of everyday people to participate in Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Over a decade in the making, the film raises vital, timely questions about authority, conformity, complicity and perpetration, national identity, and responsibility, as men and women ranging from former SS members to civilians in never-before-seen interviews reckon with – in very different ways – their memories, perceptions and personal appraisals of their own roles in the greatest human crimes in history.
"The horrors of Nazism have been explored almost infinitely in countless films of greater or lesser impact and relevance, from the seminal 'Night and Fog', by Alain Resnais; to Taika Waititi's satirical 'Jojo Rabbit'. The first shows the victims of Nazi ovens; the second mocks the followers of this regime. 'Final Account', part of the Venice Film Festival 2020 selection, does something shocking: it brings together a decade of interviews with the last living generation that participated in Hitler's Third Reich, from former SS militants to civilians of the time. The result is enlightening and surprising, and helps put into perspective the phrase popularly attributed to writer Edmund Burke: "for evil to triumph, it is enough for the good to do nothing"."