Nakam is an important contribution to films about the Holocaust. There has been great debate over the past decade about how to keep such stories from distancing us from relatively recent horrors. Set in the Ukraine, the short is based on the true story of Motele Schlein, whose violin is part of the Violins for Hope initiative and is displayed in Yad Vashem. 

Twelve year-old Mitka (Anton Krymskiy) has a difficult decision to make as he prepares to attack SS officers in the restaurant where he plays violin under the tutelage of his only friend, Yegor (Jevgenij Sitochin). It is utterly captivating from beginning to end, never falling into easy answers. 

I spoke to Director Andreas Kessler, based in Berlin, about the recently Oscar Shortlisted film. Anti-semitism and the Ukraine have become major topics of discussion over the past year. When I ask him why he chose to make this film now, Kessler explains that even the filming process happened before the war. 

“We never expect that that would actually happen. I mean never. Nobody in on the world or in Europe would would expect that to happen. And so, all of a sudden, what we were talking about in the film suddenly became kind of present again, and also with the development in Ukraine. 

Right now there’s many topics. I feel like they kind of get very present or relevant right now, because of their new kind of partisan movements, their new sites on each side. To say, we have to only speak Ukrainian. We have to only speak Russian and everything. And that’s what I think actually happens with the occupation that some people become part of the new kind of system. 

Some try to fight against the the new system and maintain the old one, and that’s a little bit like, also, this topic from the the partisan leader that we show in the film.” 

The partisan leader (Rostyslav Bome) is a complex character, who believes everyone who is not with them is against them. Given Mitka’s age and the struggles of the people in the village, the partisan becomes more antagonistic than we might expect. Kessler hoped to capture the effects of occupation on people’s thinking. 

“One goal that we wouldn’t judge anybody before we wouldn’t understand what he would do, and why he would do it. So we could understand everybody’s motivation might be like good or bad, or whatever it is; but it should be understandable and the whole kind of conflict.”

This approach to Jewish partisans revives their emotional conflicts and the sacrifices they made to saves lives. Kessler learned about Schlein’s story in a newspaper around seven years ago. He was struck by Schlein’s age. 

“I wanted to not only tell what you just mentioned, like just just a hero story which he totally is in my eyes, but at the same time I wanted to understand the complexity of the situation. When he gets to know place there might be people who are Nazis, or maybe they are right wing. But some people just work there, maybe. 

And so how does all this develop when you try to plan this kind of attack? And then also, what kind of role does this boy have to play in it. And often it was only told as a story where he kind of runs out, and he’s happy, and that’s it. And and I would understand that, totally, to tell it that way. But still I was interested to see whether there was even more complexity to it.”

For Kessler, the main goal was to make an anti-war film. 

“There’s no no real winners in the war. This is the tough question all the time: would you want to fight more of what you end something? And there’s no right and wrong in my eyes. There’s this is just like a very tough to read line where you have to consider is it worth to do it or not?”

He wanted to understand how someone so young would navigate these huge questions. Nakam centres Mitka’s experience rather than revelling in the assassination of Nazis and glorifying a ‘good’ kind of violence despite the impact it has on those carrying it out. Kessler wanted to ask what justice was in the end for the partisans. 

I ask how the team went about subverting expectations in Nakam. He highlights two scenes. One where Writer Fabien Virayie presents what could be a relief to the audience but leaves an incredibly bitter taste that proves why Mitka has to put people’s lives at risk. 

The other scene shows how the main SS officer (Peter Miklusz) is made both naive by of his ideologies and utterly unable to connect with others. Nakam reveals the officer’s fantasy world, where he gets along with the locals and is kind to animals, which he himself destroys. 

Kessler says the frequently led the audience in a different direction, since the threat of violence was so overt that they could take other parts. Nakam leaves each scene with an unpolished fear, made all the worse by the officer’s unpredictability. 

“He has this crazy stare. He goes out and then at some point he comes back. And then there was always this idea to show his hair in a kind of twisted way, and he would have a lot more sweat suddenly. He wouldn’t want to show that but also there’s something to him.”

It was important that this character liked both the starving dog and the rustic music, while also looking like someone who killed Mitka’s family. “We always tried to show everything from the boy’s perspective.”

Another Nakam avoided clichés was through the humble setting and the Nazi flag draped subtly rather than hung on display. Initially, it was only blurred in the background to foreground the music and avoid typical approaches. The test screening found it provoked a difficult reaction that contextualised everything for the audience. 

“You don’t really want to show those flags all the time. This is like very much this typical Nazi film thing, I would say. And then at the same time, you’re kind of shocked when you see this cap from the officer, so that they actually had like the signs.”

He’s referring to the skulls and other violent symbols on SS uniforms, which seem unreal today. 

“People really asked, ‘is this historically correct?’ It’s shocking.” 

He felt similarly about the Nazi salute, originally it was edited to focus on the officers, but they later decided to show Mitka’s reaction instead. It’s incredibly unclear in the scene whether the locals’ lack of participation will provoke violence. 

Music is common in films about the Nazi regime as a symbol of resistance. It plays a large role in Nakam, too. The team researched Ukrainian folk music and composer Ege Ateslioglu. Kessler and Ateslioglu asked their Ukrainian friends for advice. Ateslioglu learned from a friend in Munich about the specific influences of the time. 

Krymskiy learned how to play the pieces shortly before filming. Kessler also played violin school and it was important to be realistic with the acting. He mentions how often people in films don’t look like they’re actually playing the music being heard. 

“Of course he’s gifted, and if we he would do like, continue this kind of path. He would probably get a really really good violin. But we also wanted to show that he he’s still like struggling with some things he doesn’t have all the experience, and he’s like on a good level, but not on a like hyper kind of level that you kind of see on the stages today. 

And and that was also like interesting, because he would kind of take everything that he could in order to really make it happen and get the best out of it. And that led to the idea that we wouldn’t to to create like pieces that wouldn’t be too virtuoso, but that would suit the whole situation of a little band in a club.” 

When you watch, note the return of the piano at the end of the credits. The music is very deliberately tied to Mitka’s thoughts and inner debates. 

The location looks deceptively like rural Ukraine but is actually filmed in Brandenburg, outside Berlin, where Kessler grew up. During Covid, a university friend in Kiev sent videos of small villages nearby. 

The inside set was already full of the owners possessions so they set to work on making it look more bare and simple. It helps to avoid classic imagery of the Third Reich.

“It was all ultimately about this relationship he had to this pianist right? And I didn’t want to show this place as very ugly. Apparently it would attract a lot of people to go there to eat there, and so on. So that was why we made it, in a very absurd way, a cozy place. If there were no Nazis maybe it would be kind of nice to go there.”

Certainly an interesting TripAdvisor review. 

Kessler grew up in Germany. He says it’s always hard to answer why he was interested in making a film about the war. 

“But I just know that, through my family and everything, we always kind of talk a lot about all this history stuff. Also, like, you know, only my my grandpa still living, but he but we also talked a lot about this time. He was like a young boy during that time, so he wasn’t really seeing a lot from the war or something. So he was just like in a rural area somewhere in Germany. 

But it is such a horrible time and it’s so hard to understand what actually happened there. You always ask yourself why. Why was that possible? Why did it have to happen? I think it made me try to understand a little bit more about this, and also because you realise- like, I was just in Cleveland when I had the premiere. 

There I also met some some Jewish friends there who live in Los Angeles, and and then they sent me this news about those the Nazis on the bridges. This Kanye thing, we talked about that. Still something like that comes up from time to time, sometimes even often. And everywhere around the world we have this right wing movement, but in Germany of course, it’s even worse. If this would happen again. 

That’s kind of this attempt to make aware of those things, and also to put it in relation with what’s happening now. Not to say it’s equal, or anything. It’s really hard to compare what happened back then in Germany and what’s happening now. People tend to say it. I personally think it was such a horrible and long period. 

We don’t know how this war in Ukraine will develop, and hopefully it would be endure soon, but like I was asking myself, what what can this kind of film bring to somebody’s who’s watching. 

Back in history there was something horrible happening, not in the same country there is war again not even a century [later]. We always try to look back on the past to understand a little bit more of the present. That’s something film can do to help realise we have to end those conflicts.” 

Kessler took inspiration from Come and See, a 70’s film about a young Belorussian partisan during against the Nazis, which he describes as immersive and very brutal. 

“And it was a very well know film at that time, because it showed this horror of the Nazis out of the perspective of those people there. And and that was for me very in an interesting and important to see. As a German, you kind of have often like a lot of understanding about this time, and and you kind of expect how you would see it. 

We wanted to show this tension and horror from the very first second on in this film in our film. And then it was interesting to see, for example, this other director made this so how how he would portray all this and and that was interesting also, like when we went to museums and everything, and talked to a lot of professors and people who were like experts in this kind of field. 

Especially how the documents from this time show how brutal they were, and everything and and and that was like also like one reason why we want you to put everything in to make it as realistic as possible in a way.”

Another inspiration was Ivan’s Childhood by Tarkovsky, again, about a child partisan. Kessler was take by its sublime, invisible tension and poetry.

He’s very happy about the Oscar Shortlisting, with possible plans to turn Nakam into a feature film. It’s such an important contribution to the large collection of films confronting the horrors of Nazism, that hopefully we will get to learn more about Mitka’s story.