Stefan Ruzowitzky won the Best Foreign Film Oscar for his movie The Counterfeiters, a WWII narrative based on true events around an enormous Nazi counterfeiting scheme. It’s been quite common to see movies based on the holocaust taking home Oscars (Nazis are a modern archetype making for great good versus evil showdowns). But what you don’t often see is an Austrian filmmaker making a movie for an apparently large audience that still refuses to believe Nazis were the BAD GUYS.

I revived an interview I did in Telluride with Ruzowitzky an hour before he premiered The Counterfeiters. He talks about why he made the movie and his desire to beat up old people after the jump…

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