Picking a favourite film from an entire year is generally a tricky task. But this time around, the job was a relatively simple one thanks to Hungarian director László Nemes’s superlative debut feature, Son of Saul.
The film follows a Sonderkommando in Auschwitz desperately searching for the body of his dead son. With the camera trained close up on the haunted face of Saul – played beautifully by Géza Röhrig – for much of the running time, the horrors of the death camp surround him, and by extension the viewer, in an immersive and devastating way. It’s not a comfortable viewing experience, but it is an essential one.
