(2 oder 3 Dinge, die ich von ihm wei, 2005) Director Malte Ludin lays the cards on the table at the very start of his autobiographical documentary, “2 or 3 Things I Know About Him”: “This is the story of my father, a war criminal, my mother, my brother and sisters, my nieces and nephews. A typical German story.” Drawing from multiple sources, especially three lengthy passages with his late mother, Ludin scrupulously illuminates that sins of omission are in the larger scheme of things inevitably on par with sins of commission. He was just 5 when his father was executed for orchestrating the slaughter of the Jews of Slovakia, but Ludin’s relatives who were older and should know better still defined the man despite his integral role in the Holocaust. Ludin succeeds in discomfiting his relatives, and in several scenes with figures other than family members, shows how essentially inchoate his mission in making the film is, but there’s no sense of final revelation or any sort of expiation. 85m. 35mm. (Ray Pride)
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