Adapted from Anthony Doerr’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Netflix’s limited series “All the Light We Cannot See” sets two unlikely kindred spirits on a collision course as World War II begins in France when Germany occupied the country. Shawn Levy directed all four episodes of Steven Knight’s scripts.
Marie-Laure LeBlanc (Aria Mia Loberti) and Werner Pfennig (Louis Hoffman) share curiosity and empathy, which translates across their opposing countries and positions in the war. Werner’s skill for fixing and translating radios leads him to a high position in the Nazi effort to decode secret broadcasts that their targets might send. Marie-Laure herself becomes a broadcaster after her father moves her to her uncle’s home in a small, seaside French town.
Here are the cast and characters of “All the Light We Cannot See”:
Aria Mia Loberti in “All the Light We Cannot See” (Netflix)
Marie-Laure LeBlanc...
Marie-Laure LeBlanc (Aria Mia Loberti) and Werner Pfennig (Louis Hoffman) share curiosity and empathy, which translates across their opposing countries and positions in the war. Werner’s skill for fixing and translating radios leads him to a high position in the Nazi effort to decode secret broadcasts that their targets might send. Marie-Laure herself becomes a broadcaster after her father moves her to her uncle’s home in a small, seaside French town.
Here are the cast and characters of “All the Light We Cannot See”:
Aria Mia Loberti in “All the Light We Cannot See” (Netflix)
Marie-Laure LeBlanc...
- 11/3/2023
- by Dessi Gomez
- The Wrap
When Gilles (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) is arrested by Nazis and put on a train to a concentration camp, he has every reason to believe that his life is over. It’s 1942 in Nazi-occupied France, and all of his Jewish traveling companions are making peace with their inevitable deaths. When a stranger on the train begs him to trade half of a sandwich for a book of Persian myths, he makes the deal out of mere charity as much as anything else.
That chance encounter that kicks off “Persian Lessons” ends up saving his life, as Gilles is the only passenger spared. As it turns out, the Nazi officer who controls his destiny has been “looking for a Persian.” Klaus Koch (Lars Eidinger) is already thinking ahead to the end of WWII — the former chef plans to move to Tehran and open a German restaurant in the desert. But before he can do that,...
That chance encounter that kicks off “Persian Lessons” ends up saving his life, as Gilles is the only passenger spared. As it turns out, the Nazi officer who controls his destiny has been “looking for a Persian.” Klaus Koch (Lars Eidinger) is already thinking ahead to the end of WWII — the former chef plans to move to Tehran and open a German restaurant in the desert. But before he can do that,...
- 6/9/2023
- by Christian Zilko
- Indiewire
In Bpm (Beats Per Minute), Robin Campillo found in Nahuel Pérez Biscayart a face and voice to communicate the by turns ecstatic and wrenching role of being an activist for Act Up Paris during the early 1990s. Now, in House of Sand and Fog director Vadim Perelman’s latest, Persian Lessons, the Argentine actor, who exudes an unwavering and mournful certainty whenever he’s on screen, has found another project worthy of his talent.
Persian Lessons concerns a young Belgian Jew named Gilles (Biscayart) who’s arrested in occupied France in 1942 by SS soldiers. On the way to a concentration camp in Germany, he avoids execution by swearing that he’s Persian. Subsequently, he’s tasked with teaching Farsi to the head of Camp Koch, Klaus Koch (Lars Eidinger), who dreams of opening a restaurant in Iran after the war. What results is an intense game for survival, as Gilles pretends to know Farsi,...
Persian Lessons concerns a young Belgian Jew named Gilles (Biscayart) who’s arrested in occupied France in 1942 by SS soldiers. On the way to a concentration camp in Germany, he avoids execution by swearing that he’s Persian. Subsequently, he’s tasked with teaching Farsi to the head of Camp Koch, Klaus Koch (Lars Eidinger), who dreams of opening a restaurant in Iran after the war. What results is an intense game for survival, as Gilles pretends to know Farsi,...
- 5/19/2023
- by Ed Gonzalez
- Slant Magazine
Claiming to be inspired by true events, the story of a young Jewish man who stays alive by pretending to be half-Iranian strains credibility
Here’s a superbly acted, though worryingly polite, Holocaust survival drama by the Ukrainian film-maker Vadim Perelman. It’s the story of a Jewish man from Belgium called Gilles (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), who stays alive in a transit camp by pretending to be half-Iranian and teaching Farsi to a savage-tempered SS officer, Klaus Koch (Lars Eidinger). In truth, Gilles doesn’t know a word of Farsi; the language he makes up is gibberish, and he lives in constant terror of slipping up, forgetting one of the words he’s invented – almost 600 in six months.
The film opens with the line “inspired by true events”, but given the plausibility issues here surely it is safe to prefix that claim with “very loosely”. The setting is France, 1942; Gilles,...
Here’s a superbly acted, though worryingly polite, Holocaust survival drama by the Ukrainian film-maker Vadim Perelman. It’s the story of a Jewish man from Belgium called Gilles (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart), who stays alive in a transit camp by pretending to be half-Iranian and teaching Farsi to a savage-tempered SS officer, Klaus Koch (Lars Eidinger). In truth, Gilles doesn’t know a word of Farsi; the language he makes up is gibberish, and he lives in constant terror of slipping up, forgetting one of the words he’s invented – almost 600 in six months.
The film opens with the line “inspired by true events”, but given the plausibility issues here surely it is safe to prefix that claim with “very loosely”. The setting is France, 1942; Gilles,...
- 1/19/2021
- by Cath Clarke
- The Guardian - Film News
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