Bruno Ganz and Oliver Herschbiegel, Downfall

Easily destined to be among the year's most provocative films, the German-made Downfall is that peculiar rarity: a subtitled box-office hit. In a career-capping turn, Bruno Ganz, best known for Wim Wenders's Wings of Desire, has won raves as Adolf Hitler, while Oliver Herschbiegel's direction is properly claustrophobic and documentary-like in this wholly fact-based account of the final twelve days of the Nazi regime as Hitler was sequestered in his Berlin bunker while above the Russian army closed in. The two discuss the controversy, the notion of the world's enduring "fascination" with the Nazis and how Hitler's Parkinson's informed Ganz's portrayal.

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