Krux

In the final days of the Second World War, rumours of heavy losses and an advancing Soviet force — brutal and bloodthirsty for revenge — were making waves westward through what remained of the Third Reich. Set in a remote east German village, unluckily located on the side facing the front and in the Red Army’s path, Krux tells the true story of a point in history when right-wing terror was directed against its own people. 

While the men are away on the frontline, 28-year-old Greta (Jella Haase), 30-year-old Anni (Frida-Lovisa Hamann) and the remaining villagers — women, children, the elderly, and men, who, like the priest (Martin Wuttke) and local headmaster (Clemens Schick), were deemed unfit for service — try to preserve a semblance of life. But, mounting corpses along the riverbank signal defeat, and soon, fear gives way to hysteria, culminating in chilling and brutal commands from afar: leave no Germans alive for arriving Russians. 

With haunting visuals from celebrated director of photography Piotr Sobociński Jr. (Corpus Christi, TIFF ‘19) and balanced by Lorenz Dangel’s resonating original score, the fortified debut of writer-director Tony Vahl delivers a stark portrait of moral collapse, societal panic, and the consequences — mostly to be endured by those who bore no arms — of standing on the wrong side of history. As humanity frays and propaganda spills beyond borders, Krux leaves little space for moral quandary, where the so-called perpetrators await their fates like lambs to the slaughter.

DOROTA LECH

Content advisory: suicide, self-harm, coarse language, mature themes