Though occasionally undercut by an obviously limited budget (note those fogged up bus windows and shortchanged exteriors), co-writer/director Claus Räfle does well by this little known/utterly fascinating chapter in the WWII Holocaust, recounting the lives of Jews who stayed in Berlin after 1941. At first legally, as they worked in high-priority/protected jobs connected to the war effort; then, after 1943, when Berlin was officially declared ’free of Jews,’ the approximately 7000, mostly young, with families already sent to ‘the camps,’ either working anonymously in the city, entirely dependent on the kindness of strangers, or the few who found positions in the fragile German resistance. About 1500 survived the war and the film focuses on four, all of whom were still around and lively enough to be interviewed in extensive, intensely memorable clips which are generously, seamlessly threaded into the film proper, re-enactments of their lives in the two years before the Russians entered the city . . . which posed its own kind of threat. Well cast, and with caring attention toward the Germans who managed to help, though none of the main four actors can match the paradoxical sense of calm & spirit that served to hide the internal toughness of the survivors we meet. (Max Mauff, as a forger for the resistance, comes the closest to being as memorable as his real life counterpart.) Aptly, even gracefully, the film lets the material speak for itself in a way that’s moving and eloquent, without pumping up suspense with a surging score, squeezing out tears with mournful ‘cellos echoing Kol Nidre or basking in melodramatic overkill. Räfle lets these survivors retain a dignity and even a survivor’s sense of victory in the face of horror and unimaginable loss. (NOTE: Our Family Friendly label obviously for teens and up. Especially as three of the four 'invisibles' we follow were teenagers.)
