At the end of World War II, Salomon "Sally" Sorowitsch (Karl Markovics), a middle-aged Russian Jew, arrives in Monte Carlo with a suitcase stuffed with American money. He is ready for some serious gambling. After she has sex with him, a beautiful woman spots a concentration camp number on his arm, and the drama flashes back to 1936 when Sorowitsch was the most successful counterfeiter in Berlin. "Why earn money by making art?' he states. "Earning money by making money is much easier." But his days of glory are put to a swift end when he is arrested by police inspector Herzog (David Striesow) and sent to a Nazi concentration camp.
Sorowitsch decides that he will use every trick in the book in order to survive the ordeal which lies ahead of him. He wins special favors and treatment when the Nazis discover that he is an artist who can draw them. Five years later, Sally is relocated to Sachsenhausen. Herzog is now the commandant there, and he has come up with a grand scheme to have Sally lead a team of counterfeiters making English pounds and American dollars to destabilize the Allies' economies while filling the Nazi coffers.
Sally feels right at home with this challenge, and he orchestrates a massive effort by imprisoned artists, swindlers, and financiers. They succeed in counterfeiting the English pound but have much more difficulty with the American dollar. Sally uses his influence to save the life of a fellow Russian with TB but faces stiff opposition from Adolf Burger (August Diehl), a rebel who sabotages the project. He thinks that it is unethical for the prisoners to collude with the Nazis.
Austrian Stefan Ruzowitzky directs this tense concentration camp drama which successfully immerses us in the efforts of this Russian Jew to survive through his creativity and chutzpah.
Special DVD features include: a commentary with director Stefan Ruzowitzky; deleted scenes; the "Making-of The Counterfeiters"; Adolf Burger's historical artifacts; Q&A with Stefan Ruzowitzky; and interviews with real-life counterfeiter Adolf Burger, actor Karl Markovics, and director Stefan Ruzowitzky.
