Europa Europa

Based on the memoirs of Sally Perel, Europa Europa follows a young Jewish man whose life is upended when his family flees Germany for Poland as the Nazi threat closes in. Separated from his parents and brother during the invasion, Salomon ends up in a Soviet orphanage, where he takes on the ideology of his new surroundings. When German forces arrive, he claims to be a Volksdeutscher whose parents died at the hands of the Bolsheviks, and this false identity carries him into the German military and eventually into an elite school for Nazi youth, forcing him to hide who he is while appearing to embody everything he was born to oppose.

Agnieszka Holland directed the film and co-wrote the screenplay with Paul Hengge, working with producers Margaret Ménégoz and Artur Brauner. Marco Hofschneider plays Salomon, with André Wilms, Ashley Wanninger, Klaus Abramowsky, Michèle Gleizer and Delphine Forest in supporting roles. The film sits at the start of Holland's credited feature career, before The Secret Garden and Total Eclipse. It was released in November 1990.

On IMDb, the film holds a 7.5 rating from around 19,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 7.2 from roughly 289 votes. A critics' rating of 7.8 from 22 reviews places it slightly above the audience scores. Its worldwide box office reached about 6 million dollars, a modest return for a European co-production spanning Germany, Poland and France.