THE DISAPPEARANCE OF JOSEF MENGELE
Das Verschwinden des Josef Mengele (The Disappearance of Josef Mengele): Kirill Serebrennikov tracks a war criminal
After Limonov – The Ballad, presented last year, Kirill Serebrennikov returns in the Official Selection for the second year in a row with Das Verschwinden des Josef Mengele (The Disappearance of Josef Mengele). This time, the Russian filmmaker tracks a Nazi criminal in the adaptation of Oliver Guez’s novel.
For his seventh appearance in Cannes, after Limonov – The Ballad in 2024, Zhena Chaikovskogo (Tchaïkovsky’s Wife) in 2022, Petrov’s Flu in 2021, and also Leto in 2018, Kirill Serebrennikov returns with a new raw film, Das Verschwinden des Josef Mengele (The Disappearance of Josef Mengele). Infamous for his experiments on deportees during his tenure as medical officer in Auschwitz, Josef Mengele fled to South America at the end of the war, as so many Nazi war criminals did. The film focuses on his life in hiding, since Mengele remained on the run until his death in Brazil in 1979, without ever having been tried for his crimes.
After adapting Emmanuel Carrère’s novel Limonov for the screen, Kirill Serebrennikov has now chosen a work by another French novelist, Olivier Guez. La Disparition de Josef Mengele (The Disappearance of Josef Mengele), which was awarded the Prix Renaudot in 2017, is entirely written from the fugitive’s point of view. In the film, August Diehl plays the role of the tormentor. It is the German actor’s second appearance in Cannes, after starring in Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life in 2019.
Kirill Serebrennikov, who’s been living in exile in Berlin since the invasion of the Ukraine, was awarded the Legion of Honor at the Festival de Cannes on Saturday, May 17 by the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati. “I consider this honor a tremendous responsibility, in particular for those who are rotting away in prison for their beliefs,” the filmmaker stated during the ceremony.
