Participant presents a Zef Productions and Passion Pictures production FINAL ACCOUNT A Film by Luke Holland Official Selection – 2020 Venice International Film Festival Press Contact: Claudia Tomassini
[email protected] Sales Contact: Philippa Kowarsky, Cinephil (International)
[email protected] Josh Braun, Submarine (North America)
[email protected] Rob Williams, Participant (North America)
[email protected] FINAL ACCOUNT Logline: Final Account, over a decade in the making, is an urgent portrait of the last living generation of everyday Germans to participate in Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich – raising vital questions about authority, conformity, national identity and responsibility, as men and women ranging from former SS members to civilans reckon in very different ways with their memories, perceptions and personal appraisals of their own roles in the greatest human crimes in history. Short Synopsis: In 2008, British filmmaker Luke Holland began interviewing the last living generation of Germans to have participated in Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich--not the infamously chilling names in history books, but the everyday citizens who carried out the plans made by the architects of mass-scale genocide. These were the young men and women, then just starting their lives, who became SS members, Wehrmacht fighters, concentration camp guards and silent civilian witnesses. More than a decade and 250 interviews later, Holland has created Final Account, a raw and urgent document that reflects, in the most direct and personal way, on the question of how otherwise ordinary, aspirational human beings took part in one of the most extraordinary of all human crimes. As Holland mixes in-depth witness statements, previously unseen archival material and haunting current-day footage, what comes to the fore is a portrait of how rapidly moral norms can evaporate and how myths and denial can fill the vacuum.