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The Reader
GERMANY · 2008

The Reader

Stephen Daldry
illiteracy and shame war crimes and accountability forbidden romance moral complicity redemption and guilt
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Synopsis

The story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a teenager in the late 1950s, had an affair with an older woman, Hanna, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a concentration camp guard late in the war. He alone realizes that Hanna is illiterate and may be concealing that fact at the expense of her freedom.

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