Persian Lessons

A hit on the international film circuit, including the Berlin Film Festival, Persian Lessons is a unique and spellbinding drama by Ukrainian Jewish director Vadim Perelman (The House of Sand and Fog). Gilles, a young Jewish Belgian man, is arrested in 1942 by the SS and sent to a concentration camp in Germany. He narrowly avoids execution by swearing to the guards that he is not Jewish, but Persian. This lie leads Gilles to a seemingly untenable mission: to teach Persian to an officer in charge of the camp's kitchen, who dreams of opening a restaurant in Iran once the war is over. Gilles finds himself having to invent a language he doesn't know, as he creates a vocabulary and an intricate set of linguistic rules.