Der Passagier - Welcome to Germany (1988)

Mr. Cornfield, a Hollywood film director, arrives in Berlin to make a film about an episode from the Holocaust that takes place in a Berlin film studio: In 1942, a director named Körner receives permission from the Ministry of Propaganda to select thirteen Jewish prisoners from a concentration camp for his antisemitic feature film. They would be employed as extras, housed on the studio grounds, and allowed to emigrate to Switzerland once filming was complete. A rabbi helps him make his selection at a nighttime roll call. Among those chosen are two young men, Janko and Baruch. When the camp commandant demands that one of them be returned because he is a criminal, the other also offers to withdraw. But the director insists on taking them both. During filming, the extras argue over possible escape attempts, and tensions arise with the SS guards. When it emerges at a cast party that the director has been fired and the promised emigration is highly doubtful, one of the two young men decides to escape with the help of a makeup artist. The attempt ends fatally. The future of the twelve who remain is uncertain. It turns out that Cornfield, the director of this story, was one of the thirteen prisoners and is trying to come to terms with his own life story through the film he is making. A supposed additional survivor who applies for one of the extras’ roles turns out to be a fraud. Finally, the makeup artist from the original film shoot also appears and reveals that events did not unfold as heroically as Cornfield depicts them in his film, and tells the film crew how things really ended.