Son of Saul

Inside the Auschwitz complex in 1944, Saul, a Hungarian Jewish prisoner, is pressed into the grisly ritual of burning bodies. The routine is endless and numbing, yet he clings to a stubborn flutter of hope. He becomes convinced that a young boy he encounters, already half dead and feverish, might be his son, and he longs to grant him a proper burial amid the ash and corruption. The film follows Saul as he navigates the camp’s brutal hierarchy, the suffocating atmosphere of smoke and fear, and the insistence of a system that erases even the most basic acts of humanity. Each moment forces him to decide how far he will go to protect this fragile memory. The camera lingers on the smoke.

Directed by László Nemes, the film is an original screenplay co written with Clara Royer. It premiered in 2015 at the Cannes Film Festival and marked Nemes's debut feature, a spare, intense study fueled by a singular vision.

At Cannes 2015 Son of Saul earned the festival's Grand Prix, signaling a bold, unflinching take on the Holocaust. It went on to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2016, bringing international recognition to Nemes's tightly controlled, immersive style and its moral focus.

Praised for a single minded camera stance and long takes, the film reshaped Holocaust cinema with a brutal sense of proximity. Its stark black and white images, sparse dialogue, and relentless pace create a pressure cooker of guilt and empathy, influencing later tense, character driven historical dramas.

Critics highlighted its spare dialogue, claustrophobic atmosphere, and Saul's ethical struggle as a prism for memory and faith under duress. The film foregrounds choice over spectacle, asking what it means to give a corpse and a life alike a last rite when the world forgets, and the audience feels implicated.