Final Account: Storyville, BBC Four review - confessions of the last survivors of the Nazi era

★★★★★ FINAL ACCOUNT Luke Holland's final documentary is a searing examination of Hitler's Germany

Luke Holland's final documentary is a searing examination of Hitler's Germany

Do we need another documentary about Nazi Germany? Yes, when it is as cogent and subtle as Luke Holland’s Final Account. Made over eight years while the veteran film-maker was battling with the cancer that killed him in 2020, it’s a tapestry of interviews with the ageing generation who lived under Hitler, a last chance to put them on camera.

Blu-ray: The Love of Jeanne Ney

★★★ BLU-RAY: THE LOVE OF JEANNE NEY The cluttered German silent film is a classic by default

The cluttered German silent film is a classic by default

GW Pabst’s The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927), adapted from the novel by the Russian revolutionary author Ilya Ehrenburg, is a fascinating example of a major movie, vividly rendered by a filmmaker at his peak, that was compromised by its producers’ commercial agenda.

Blu-ray: The Damned

Luchino Visconti’s indispensable trend-setting drama

One German writer found a neat yet teasing way to sum up the difference between Luchino Visconti’s The Damned (1969), the first film in the Italian director’s “German trilogy”, and the two films that followed it.

'The din is loud these days': playwright Cordelia Lynn on her imminent premiere at the Donmar Warehouse

PLAYWRIGHT CORDELIA LYNN On bringing together 'Love and Other Acts of Violence', her premiere at the Donmar Warehouse

The author of 'Love and Other Acts of Violence' sets out her stall

As I write this, we've just had our final day in the rehearsal room and are going into tech onstage next week with my new play, which is also reopening the Donmar not only to live performance but follows major renovations at their home address.

theartsdesk Q&A: filmmaker Marco Kreuzpaintner

FILMMAKER MARCO KREUZPAINTNER On Germany, the Nazis, justice and the law

What his new film 'The Collini Case' says about Germany, the Nazis, justice and the law

In 2011, Ferdinand von Schirach’s novel Der Fall Collini (The Collini Case) was published, its narrative of crime and punishment inspired by a law passed in Germany in 1968. Promoted by Dr Eduard Dreher, a former Nazi-era prosecutor who served in the post-1945 West German justice ministry along with many fellow ex-Nazis, this law was in effect an amnesty for murders committed during the Third Reich era.

Christopher Clark: Prisoners of Time review - from Kaiser Bill to Dominic Cummings

★★★ CHRISTOPHER CLARK - PRISONERS OF TIME The past at work in the present

A leading historian finds the past busily at work in the present

Historians seldom make the news themselves. However, Christopher Clark – the Australian-born Regius Professor of History at Cambridge University – hogged headlines and filled op-ed pages in Germany when the centenary of the First World War’s outbreak arrived in 2014.

Bagdad Café, Old Vic review - sweet but scattershot

★★★ BAGDAD CAFE, OLD VIC Stage adaptation needs more narrative drive

Stage adaptation of 1987 film needs more narrative drive

A gorgeous song exists in search of a show to match over at Bagdad Café, the 1987 film that gave the world the memorably plaintive "Calling You", which is threaded throughout Emma Rice's stage adaptation of the movie with understandable insistence.