(Hirschbiegel / Germany / 2004 / 155mins / 35mm / cert15)
(Tue 7th June / 8pm / £2ttt)

Downfall tracks Hitler's last days in his underground fortress as the allies surround a bombarded Berlin. It is an uncompromising look at one of history's most fiendish villains from a purely German point of view. Bruno Ganz gives the great dictator a human face as the struggles with the onset of Parkinson's disease and prepares to take his own life. Controversial in its native Germany, Oliver Hirschbiegel's meticulous film is no sensational shockfest, but a living, breathing historical recreation of Hitler's end.

This film is based on the memoirs and interviews of Traudl Junge, Hitler's personal secretary from 1943 to his suicide in 1945. Junge was the subject of 2003's captivating talking-head documentary BLIND SPOT. She was a beautiful, but incredibly naïve young girl when hired by Hitler as his stenographer. The film is told from her perspective and intricately dramatises her relationship to the Führer. Claustrophobic, tense and often riveting