In this highly underrated 2016 German film, young Yenish boy Ernst Lossa (Ivo Pietzcker) is transferred to a psychiatric hospital during World War II where he works for Dr. Werner Veithausen (Sebastian Koch). Rather than having a long stay there Ernst plans to return home soon to his father Christian (Karl Markovics), but isn't discharged because his father has just been released from a concentration camp and has no stable address. Before long, though, Ernst befriends fellow patient Nandl (Jule Hermann), and together they gradually become aware of how Dr. Veithausen plans to implement the Nazi involuntary euthanasia program in the institution. Now, they have to do something about that.
Much less epic and graphic than Schindler's List (1993) or The Pianist (2002), but more restrained and authentic than The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2008), Fog in August is an admirably unique and emotional entry in the Holocaust film genre. Not simply because it focuses exclusively on Aktion T4 (the postwar name for Nazi Germany's involuntary euthanasia program) as opposed to what happened in the camps and ghettos, but because director Kai Wessel and writers Robert Domes and Holger Karsten Schmidt strive to tread this very delicate territory with thoroughly lucidity, tenderness and objectivity. Wessel's direction has a very precisely controlled pacing, with no flashy angles or tracking shots and minimal music cues, and Domes' and Schmidt's screenplay sticks respectfully to the facts as much as possible for narrative reasons, also giving each character dialogue that sounds realistic for their ages and the period. The cast are uniformly solid; Pietzcker and Hermann adequately convey their young characters' fading innocence and together they show nice chemistry as these two kids who reluctantly come to care for each other, Fritzi Haberlandt is the standout for me as the secretly sheltering but vulnerable Sister Sophia, Henriette Confurius makes her complicitly evil Sister Edith a balanced creation, Koch is watchable if not exactly challenged,
Fog in August doesn't actually try to say anything new for a Holocaust movie despite its distinctive focus, but it works so well because it manages to convey its messages in quite a brave, sincere and original way. It also succeeds as a coming-of-age tale involving an encounter (that unfortunately really happened) with a truly seminal brand of evil, and that in turn also helps it emphasise what happens when the child's world and the adult's world collide. The result is genuinely powerful, sobering and unsettling.
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