‘Final Account’ Trailer Takes Us Inside Hitler’s Third Reich

Focus Features just released a powerful trailer for the documentary Final Account. Filmmaker Luke Holland (Good Morning, Mr. Hitler), who passed away in 2020, captured interviews with nearly 300 elderly individuals who were witnesses or actual participants in Hitler’s atrocities.

The film’s trailer reveals how conflicted Holland’s interview subjects were, with some arguing they were completely oblivious to what was happening while others admitted to being aware of but doing nothing to stop the murders of Jewish citizens during the Holocaust.

“More than anything, Final Account is a tribute to Luke Holland’s foresight and bravery. He confronted the people behind his family’s suffering with curiosity, in order to help us all understand what happens when ordinary people participate in extraordinary evil. Sadly, Luke’s untimely passing means he will not meet the audiences who experience his final project, but we are proud after so many years of work to be able to help present it to the world,” stated Dr. Stephen Smith, Executive Director of the USC Shoah Foundation.

Final Account premiered at the 2020 Venice Film Festival and will be released in theaters on May 21, 2021.

Final Account Poster

The Plot, Courtesy of Focus Features:

Final Account is an urgent portrait of the last living generation of everyday people to participate in Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. Over a decade in the making, the film raises vital, timely questions about authority, conformity, complicity and perpetration, national identity, and responsibility, as men and women ranging from former SS members to civilians in never-before-seen interviews reckon with – in very different ways – their memories, perceptions and personal appraisals of their own roles in the greatest human crimes in history.”