As part of the current "Film im Theater" season, the StattKino initiative, in cooperation with the Idar-Oberstein Cultural Office and Schalom e. V., will be showing the drama "Persian Lessons" on Friday, 19 January 2024, at 7.30 pm in the Stadttheater. The film, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2020, is based on the story "Invention of a Language" by Wolfgang Kohlhaase. Landgasthof Böß will be serving "Persian gibberish" in the theater's banquet hall at 6.30 p.m. as a suitable meal offering, for which registration is required.
During the Second World War in German-occupied France, Gilles (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), the son of a rabbi from Antwerp who actually wanted to flee to Switzerland, is captured by the SS together with other Jews and taken to a concentration camp. There, the Belgian uses a trick to help himself: he claims not to be Jewish, but Persian. For a piece of bread, he received the book "The Myths of the Persians" from a fellow sufferer. He adopts the name Reza Joon, which is listed in the book.
Possession of the book will now determine his path and he escapes death because Hauptsturmführer Klaus Koch (Lars Eidinger), head of a transit camp and a real cook by profession, has promised additional meat to those who bring him a "real Persian". The SS man wants to learn as many Persian words as possible in order to open his own restaurant in Iran at the end of the war. It doesn't bother him that Gilles can't write Persian. Gilles speaks French and German, but in Persian he only knows the words for mother and father. Now he has to teach cook Farsi - without knowing a single word himself.
"Persian Lessons" is a gripping and moving drama which, in a courageous balancing act, depicts the horrors of the Shoah in a detached manner while at the same time demonstrating a fine sense of irony. Supported by a cleverly constructed screenplay, it focuses on the story of a fragile relationship. The film is an ode to the human will to survive and the victory of the human spirit over an inhuman ideology.
- Admission to the movie costs 4 euros. Admission is from 7 pm, there is free seating. The movie including dinner costs 18 euros. Places for the meal are limited, and Landgasthof Böß will accept bookings up to eight days before the event date at the latest, subject to availability, by emailing info@landgasthaus-boess.de. Meal reservations cannot be returned or exchanged. Tickets and food can only be paid for on site at the box office.