Persian Lessons

From Vadim Perelman, director of the Oscar nominated House of Sand and Fog. In occupied France Gilles (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) is arrested by SS soldiers alongside other Jews and sent to a concentration camp in Germany. He narrowly avoids sudden execution by swearing to the guards that he is not Jewish, but Persian. This lie temporarily saves him, but Gilles gets assigned a life-or-death mission: to teach Farsi to Head of Camp Koch (Lars Eidinger), who dreams of opening a restaurant in Teheran once the war is over. Through an ingenious trick, Gilles manages to survive by inventing words of "Farsi" every day and teaching them to Koch. The particular relationship between the two men sparks the jealousy of other prisoners and SS guards towards Gilles, so Gilles must remember a fabricated language and navigate the politics of the Nazi officers while surviving the horrors of a concentration camp. And while the suspicions of Koch grow every day, Gilles understands that he will not be able to keep his secret very long.