The Conference (Die Wannseekonferenz)

synopsis

On the morning of January 20, 1942, in a villa on the picturesque Lake Wannsee in Berlin leading members of the Nazi regime came together. SS, Reich Chancellery, ministries, police, administration. Reinhard Heydrich had invited them to a "meeting followed by breakfast". This meeting would go down in history as the "Wannsee Conference". The sole topic on the agenda that morning was what the Nazis called the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question": the organisation of the systematic mass murder of millions of Jews throughout Europe.

The Conference follows the minutes of this meeting as recorded by Adolf Eichmann, of which only one copy remains, and which is a key document pertaining to the Holocaust.

In the tradition of Downfall and Son of Saul, The Conference is a gripping examination of the cynical nature of humankind's violence unto itself and is a startling reminder that these very horrors perpetrated could happen again.