Director Lajos Koltai stunned the 2005 Berlin Film Festival with this Second World War drama based on the Nobel Prize winning novel by Imre Kertész, a quasi-autobiographical work about his experiences as a 14-year-old deported from Budapest to the Nazi labour camps during the Holocaust. Drafted into forced labour by the German authorities, Gyuri Köves, a young Jewish-Hungarian, is shuttled between the death factories of Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Zeitz - all the while, maintaining a stubborn, stoic endurance to the unimaginable fate that has befallen him and those around him. Vast in scale yet boasting remarkable historical detail, and with a sweeping score by Ennio Morricone, this is a film of immense compassion, unlikely beauty and shattering power - a true testament to the resilience of the human spirit.